The hospital has 354 inpatient beds as of 2020.[1] 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.[2]
The hospital first opened on 27 November 1893 with 25 inpatient beds across four wards, and was staffed by two doctors and three nurses.[3]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.[4][5][6]
In 1968, a 20-year-old male died during an operation at the hospital in New Zealand's first recorded case of malignant hyperthermia (MH), a genetic disorder which causes a severe reaction in susceptible person when exposed to certain anaesthetic agents. It was subsequently discovered the deceased man 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 Regional Hospital involves a MH-susceptible patient, compared to between 1:10,000 and 1:250,000 worldwide. New Zealand's first (and only) MH testing centre was set up at Massey University in 1978, and was taken over the hospital's anaesthetic department in 1986.[7][8][9]
