View from the staff room deck

This afternoon I had to attend a meeting in the adult inpatient unit. The fourth to be built on the Auckland Hospital campus (in 2004) it is on the same site as the original psychiatric inpatient unit. Once a "state of the art" building, it now looks very tired and unfit for purpose. One of its best features always was the second level, which comprises staff offices, meeting rooms, administration offices, and a staff room for staff to use for breaks and meals, with a large deck looking out to the Waitemata Harbour and across to Devonport and beyond it Mount Victoria.

Named Takarunga by Maori, this is one of the about 50 volcanoes across the whole Auckland Isthmus, and into the Hauraki Gulf. Some of the container port cranes ddominate the centre of the view, while Takarunga waits quietly on the right. Waiting for what? Perhaps the next volcanic eruption from the Auckland field.

Tired this evening after yet another day which started early, finished late and contained a number of challenging problems. The easiest is dealing with the decisions about the care of someone with a treatment resistant depression. The hardest is marrying the appropriate care of a patient with a judicial decision limiting what the service can do. 

I chose to take on this task.