User:Lcmortensen/Palmerston North Hospital

Palmerston North Hospital is the main public hospital in Palmerston North, New Zealand. The hospital is located at the northern end of Ruahine Street, 2 km northwest of The Square. It is the main hospital run by the MidCentral District Health Board, which primarily serves Palmerston North and the surrounding Manawatu, Tararua and Horowhenua districts.

The hospital first opened on 27 November 1893 with 25 inpatient beds across four wards, and was staffed by two doctors and three nurses. Ellen Dougherty was the hospital's first matron; on 10 January 1902, she became the world's first registered nurse after the New Zealand Parliament passed the Nurses Registration Act 1901.

As of 2020, Palmerston North Hospital has 354 inpatient beds. The hospital is a major trauma centre, one of four in the lower North Island alongside Hawke's Bay Hospital, Whanganui Hospital and Wellington Regional Hospital.

The hospital is home to the national testing centre for malignant hyperthermia (MH), a genetic disorder which causes a severe and potentially fatal reaction in susceptible people when exposed to inhaled anaesthetics or the muscle relaxant suxamethonium. The country's first recored case of malignant hyperthermia occured at the hospital in 1968, where a 20-year-old male died during an operation on his jaw. It was subsequently discovered he was part of a large family based in the Manawatū region that had carried the gene for many generations. As a result, around one in every 200 surgeries at Palmerston North Hospital involves a MH-susceptible patient, compared to between 1:10,000 and 1:250,000 worldwide.