Newspaper Article – Nurse in Korea

Nurse in Korea

NEW experience will be added to an already colourful nursing career when Sister Elsie Leipst of the Hastings Memorial Hospital leaves this month for Korea, where she will represent the New Zealand Save the Children Fund. She is the first nurse appointed from New Zealand to work with the organisation in Korea and will be attached to the Masan Hospital, from which base she will also do district work.

Sister Leipst was born in Hastings and in 1939 she was a trainee of the first classes opened for nurses at the Hastings Memorial Hospital.

After her general training, Sister Leipst nursed at Stratford Hospital, Cook Hospital, Gisborne, and Truby King at Dunedin, where she carried out her Plunket training. After a period of infant welfare work in Gisborne she returned to Hastings for three and a half years as Plunket nurse.

In 1950 she went to England where she spent four years between Samaritan Hospital, Paddington Hospital, Shetland Islands and East Cornwall Hospital, Bodmin. Sister Leipst has also spent a year in Israel, where she did general and maternity and clinic work and she has nursed in a leper hospital.

On her return to New Zealand she obtained a diploma in public health, and for the last five and a half years has been a member of the staff at Hastings Memorial Hospital.

The Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board has granted her two years leve [leave] of absence to go to Korea.

Photo caption –  Sister Elsie Leipst