Welsh doctor wants to improve women's health

Sunday, 26 June 2011, 7:02 pm
Press Release: Waikato District Health Board

Jeremy Gasson is a long way from home.

From his offices on the ninth floor of the Elizabeth Rothwell Building at Waikato Hospital, the Welsh doctor looks out over Lake Rotoroa and Hamilton City.

It’s a view Jeremy has had for about seven months, since he moved to New Zealand last November to take up the position of Clinical Unit Leader of Women’s Services and Specialist Obstetrician and Gynaecologist for the Waikato District Health Board.

Jeremy manages the medical side of women’s health services for the region, setting the direction for the service overall.

He is in charge of about 30 medical doctors, including senior medical officers, house surgeons and registrars, and is responsible for everything from the medical budget to meeting targets around women’s access to care and getting procedures done in a timely manner.

It’s Jeremy’s job to make sure staff credentials are legitimate and that training is up to date, and staff are getting ongoing education to keep them at the top of their fields. He also has to investigate complaints.

Jeremy works in tandem with Phillipa Wright, the newly appointed Midwife Manager who manages the department’s midwives and nursing staff.

“We work in parallel,” says Jeremy. “It’s all about working hand-in-hand and I think we are singing off the same hymn sheet.”

Jeremy oversees the obstetrics department including the Women’s Assessment Unit (which deals with more complex pregnancy complications), the Delivery Suite (where new babies are delivered), Ward 51 (antenatal) and Ward 52 (postnatal), the gynaecology and colposcopy outpatient wards, gynae theatre and emergency surgeries.
His area of interest is urogynecology, the treatment of pelvic floor disorders, prolapse and incontinence. In the future he hopes to set up an urogynecology clinic at Waikato Hospital.

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“You’d be surprised at how common incontinence is,” says Jeremy. “It’s a big issue that affects women of all ages. In the UK, 25-30 per cent of women at some stage in their life will have a problem. There is an assumption that it affects old women only, but younger women can get it.”

Jeremy’s journey to Hamilton began in southern Wales.

The 45-year-old was born in Pontypridd, a small town about 19 kilometres north of the Welsh capital, Cardiff.

“I was always interested in medicine, in things like science and biology in high school,” says Jeremy, who went on to study at the University of Leicester, graduating with his medical degree in 1989.

He became interested in obstetrics and gynaecology as a fourth year student, delivering babies at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

After stints in paediatrics and general surgery, he came to New Zealand for 15 months in 1997 as a forth-year registrar, working in obstetrics and gynaecology at Dunedin Public Hospital.

It was a chance to get some valuable oversees experience at a time when there was a glut of graduates in the field.

He returned to the UK to finish his training, working at the Royal Victoria Infirmary teaching hospital in Newcastle-on-Tyne for a year, then as a consultant at Swansea Hospital from mid-2000 for 10 years.

Seven months ago he took the opportunity to move his family – wife Helen, daughter Katharine, 10, and son David, 8 – to New Zealand to lead the Women’s Services team at Waikato Hospital.

Jeremy says some aspects of women’s health are different between New Zealand and United Kingdom. “The big difference is in maternity services,” says Jeremy.

In New Zealand, pregnant women are lucky enough to have their choice of Lead Maternity Carer, including independent midwives in the community, private obstetricians, general practitioners or hospital midwifery teams. Most women also have the choice of where they will give birth: at home, a birthing centre or in a hospital.

In the UK, women tend to birth in hospitals, and their maternity care is through the National Health Service rather than from independent community midwives.

Jeremy says pregnant Waikato women should feel confident in the high quality of midwives and hospital staff in the region.

Locally, almost two-thirds of babies born in the region last year were delivered at Waikato Hospital.

In the year to June 2010, 5381 babies were born in the Waikato District Health Board area, including 3365 (63 per cent) at Waikato Hospital and 509 (9 per cent) at other area hospitals.

Some 1126 births (about 21 per cent) were at Hamilton birthing centres, and the remainder were at regional birthing centres.

Waikato Hospital is the safest place for women to give birth, especially for mothers and babies with health issues or complex needs. In an emergency, the hospital’s midwives and medical staff are able to respond quickly, and its newly refurbished, modern Delivery Suite has state-of-the-art equipment.

“Waikato Hospital is a tertiary level hospital with a level three neonatal unit, so we end up being a place where complex cases are transferred in from surrounding hospitals in the midland region,” says Jeremy. “We have women coming in from as far away as Gisborne, Tauranga, Whakatane and New Plymouth and tend to get those more complex cases, like pregnant women with underlying medical issues such as preeclampsia, or with very premature babies.”

He says there is room for improvement when it comes to communication between midwives and doctors. Handover needs to be “crystal clear” between Lead Maternity Carers and hospital staff.

“(When it comes to childbirth) people are often concerned about the medicalization of what is a physiological process,” says Jeremy. “But we (the hospital) are there to pick up the pieces when it does not go right, and that can be hard to predict. Sometimes we are intervening when things might go wrong, but there is no crystal ball. You use your best judgement at the time.”

Waikato Hospital’s Delivery Suite is a busy area. The number of babies born at the hospital has increased steadily over the past five years (from 2875 in 2005 to 3615 in 2010).

With birth numbers up, recruiting and retaining midwives is an issue says Jeremy, one the Waikato District Health Board is looking at seriously.

A recruitment drive is in place for hospital midwives; and private midwives may have the option to do shift work.

Jeremy hopes it will be a win-win solution for the hospital and for Lead Maternity Carers in the community, who can help shoulder the busy workload for their hospital-based colleagues. “Shifts can be an income option to help financially, and will also help LMCs to become fully acquainted with the hospital so they can know the system and that can make it easier with they are bringing clients in,” says Jeremy. “The facilities are now good. We have a new ultrasound machine and we are working on upgrading other equipment – we’ve just brought a load of new blood pressure machines.”

When it comes to life outside the hospital, Jeremy says New Zealand is not so different to Wales.

Hamilton has become a home away from home.

Jeremy enjoys sport, and is a big rugby fan. “I have season tickets for the Waikato Rugby Club,” says Jeremy. “Back home I was a season ticket holder with Ospreys Rugby Club.”

With the Rugby World Cup only months away, he has secured tickets for his family to attended the two Welsh games against Fiji and Samoa at Waikato Stadium.

It’s been a tough decision for the Gasson family deciding which team to support.

Jeremy and son David say they plan to back Wales until they get knocked out of competition, then will support the All Blacks all the way.

The Welsh team famously played the All Blacks in the semi-final round during the 1987 Rugby World Cup – “a great game” recalls Jeremy – and he is looking to enjoying more good rugby when his team comes to town this spring.

In the meantime, his focus is on improving women’s health in the Waikato region.

Waikato District Health Board

Healthy People. Excellent Care

Waikato District Health Board (DHB) employs over 6500 people and plans, funds and provides hospital and health services to more than 391,770 people in a region covering eight per cent of New Zealand.