Rudman's city: Hospital titles the least of our health problems

By BRIAN RUDMAN

There's no doubt that Auckland District Health Board chairman Wayne Brown enjoys a good scrap. But surely he has enough bouts already lined up, without deliberately going out and buying a fight over the name of Auckland's children's hospital.

Brown reckons the name "the Starship" encourages children to think it is an interesting place to go. He says children would be better off if they did not think "it was a great idea to end up in hospital", and prefers "the Auckland Sick Children's Hospital".

Such a name would strip away some of the mystique about the place and motivate parents to focus on keeping their kids healthy, he says.

Ten years ago, when then adman Bob Harvey came up with the Starship label, I was as opposed to it as Brown now is.

But, like the equally ludicrous "The Edge," it has become such a part of Auckland's patois that you have to wonder why anyone would want to bother changing it.

Surely there are more pressing issues?

Back in 1992 when the name was adopted, tricking kids into hospital was only one of the aims of the exercise. At least as important was creating a zany image that proponents dreamed would somehow attract millions of dollars of sponsorship.

Harvey, who was "on loan" as a consultant, enthused also that the Starship image could put the children's hospital on the Auckland tourist trail along with Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World and the Aotea Centre. Shades of the Victorian predilection for visiting mental asylums.

He said the nasty negative word "hospital" was a definite no-no because it had connotations, particularly for Maori and Pacific Island people, of sickness and death.

Hospital director at the time Dr John Newman echoed these sentiments, predicting that every child in New Zealand would come to know the Starship as an exciting place rather than something of which they were scared.

Writing at the time I said that as an ex-child, I couldn't imagine any sick kids being fooled for a minute by such lily-gilding.

For starters, it went against the whole television culture of starships being vehicles of war and death, full of life-sucking blobs and hideous monsters and deadly rays. What kids would want to risk a trip to one of these - particularly when they were feeling poorly?

A decade on, Brown seems to be trapped in the same adman belief system as the originators of the Starship name. That is, that kids are little consumers who can be persuaded in or out of hospital by a label. Both believe using the words "sick" and "hospital" are enough to frighten kids off.

The difference with Brown is that he thinks that's no bad thing.

My feeling is that it takes more than a bit of jiggery-pokery with a name to trick a child into hospital.

It did me anyway, way back in the Dark Ages when tonsils were amputated almost as regularly as foreskins.

I was whisked off one morning to something called a nursing home - no mention of the dreaded hospital word - where I was assured my sore throat would be miraculously cured and I'd live happily after on lashings of ice cream and jelly.

The smell of disinfectant and the rustle of starched nurses was enough to warn me that all was not as advertised.

The moment I was left alone, I was out of that building and running as fast as my two little pyjama clad legs and inflamed tonsils could take me, 2km or so along Morrinsville's streets back home.

There was no happy ending. A week later I was dragged back to the non-hospital and put in a room with a trusty who was told to press the buzzer if I moved a foot.

Back in the present century, I've spoken to parents of Starship patients whose children have neither been fooled by the name, nor want to return if they can help it.

I can't see how changing the name at this stage is going to make any difference. One caller pointed out that the proposed Auckland Sick Children's Hospital label is grammatically sick anyway.

He's right. Check any dictionary and you'll find that a hospital is defined as a place where sick or injured or ill people are treated.

The sick in the title is therefore at best, redundant and at worst, a scare tactic.

To me, though, the issue is more basic. However silly the name was to begin with, it's now part of the Auckland scene.

Changing it will do nothing for children's health. All it will do is rile the dedicated champions of the Starship, both professional and voluntary.

At a time when Brown needs every friend he can get, this seems a battle where he'll end up the loser, whatever the outcome may be.

nzherald.co.nz/hospitals