When ABC Melbourne mornings presenter Raf Epstein broadcasts his show from outside the old Footscray Hospital on Wednesday, he won’t just be marking the end of a western suburbs institution, but also a part of his family history.
“My dad worked there for a period spanning 50 years,” Epstein said of his late father, Dr Joseph Epstein, who for decades was the director of emergency medicine at Footscray Hospital until his retirement in 2015.
Dr Epstein died in 2022 aged 81.
Given his father’s history at the hospital, it’s unsurprising that his son has a fair bit there too.
“The current emergency department, the layout that he designed, I helped him map that out with a tape measure,” Epstein recalled of a weekend they spent there in the early 80’s.
That weekend was part of the countless hours Epstein spent at the hospital in his youth, as his father struggled to separate his work and family commitments.
“He would drop in on the way to somewhere and he’d say, ‘oh yeah I won’t be a minute and he’d be two hours’,” he recalled, adding that he spent time there as a patient too.
“He fixed a broken leg of mine there.
“I was in grade six and when I got my foot stuck in the back wheel of a bicycle. I was being dinked by a mate.”
However, Epstein said it was treating those who were more seriously hurt, such as workers injured in industrial accidents in western suburbs factories, that shaped his father’s career.
“That’s what switched him onto emergency medicine because workers in that part of Melbourne (the west) weren’t getting the care they needed.
“That’s why he worked so hard to turn emergency medicine into a specialty.”
With the new hospital set to open in the new year, Epstein said his show at the old one would cover the transition from one site to the other, but would ultimately focus more on people than place.
“Healthcare is more than doctors and nurses, it’s a whole lot of different people.,” he said.
“We’re just gonna try and tell their stories I guess.”
