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Our People
GP retires after 36 years
ONE of Pakuranga’s longest standing GPs is hanging up her stethoscope for the last time this month.
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| FAREWELL: Dr Hilary Weeks is leaving the Pakuranga Family Medical Centre after 36 years. Times photo Bruce Nicholson. |
“I was snaffled up by [the late Dr] Gam Lee,” recalls Dr Weeks. “He said, ‘Come’, and I’ve been here ever since.”
An upcoming merger with the Reeves Rd Medical Centre and Pakuranga Plaza Medical Centre has prompted the Ellerslie resident’s retirement.
“It has been a wonderful place to work, but I couldn’t go on with the merger. I’m too much of a part-time doctor,” she says.
“One of my patients offered to be my receptionist if I started up my own practice. That was very kind.”
Dr Weeks was educated at Cambridge University and in her career has specialised in women’s health and sports medicine.
“I’ve enjoyed my sports medicine. I’ve really enjoyed the achievements of the men and women who’ve come here.”
She’s a past medical director of the Auckland Family Planning Association and in the 1980s helped develop the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act.
A keen sportswoman, she won silver at the Masters Games for rowing at age 65, has a discus title and was part of a five-times winning Orienteering New Zealand team.
Alongside legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard, she promoted jogging as a way for women to overcome “suburban neurosis”.
“They were at home with the men going off to work. I saw it [research on jogging] and went wow. I think it started in Pakuranga back in the 1970s.”
The 72-year-old has two children and five grandchildren, one of whom is a medical student.
Following a recent cruise in Alaska, she’s been bitten by the travel bug and plans to pursue her wanderlust in the coming years.
On her to-do list is a sail around Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America.
Full retirement from medicine is some way off for Dr Weeks, as she works part-time at Greenlane Hospital. However, she says she’ll miss the variety of general practice and her patients.
In the long-term Dr Weeks plans to retire to Napier, where she hopes to “at last have time to get fit again”.
Her last day at Pakuranga Family Medical Centre is June 26.
