About Us
We are the only emergency ambulance service in greater Wellington and the Wairarapa, and the only ones in the country who are free.
We are the only emergency ambulance service in greater Wellington and the Wairarapa, and the only ones in the country who are free.
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Wellington Free Ambulance work with staff and WorkSafe on Improvement Notice
Wellington Free Ambulance work with staff and WorkSafe on Improvement Notice
30 July 2021
Wellington Free Ambulance provides emergency ambulance, communication centre, patient transfer and event medic services to the communities of Greater Wellington and Wairarapa. We know that the nature of our work and the hours and type of work our workers undertake can lead to fatigue.
Update 30 July 2021
Wellington Free Ambulance (WFA) was issued a WorkSafe Improvement Notice in late May, this notice had a remedial date of 30 July 2021.
Wellington Free Ambulance requested an extension to this timeline, to allow the right conversations and consultation to take place with all staff and unions. This extension also allows our new CE, David Robinson to be part of the process and solution.
WorkSafe have accepted the request for an extension and the new date is 30 September 2021.
We are continuing to engage with WorkSafe, and seek advice, on the matters they have raised.
The health, safety and wellbeing of our people and patients is our highest priority and we are committed to ensuring the environment in which we all work takes this into consideration.
Original article published 17 June 2021:
On 20 May 2021 WorkSafe issued an Improvement Notice, related to fatigue risk management. This was received on 24 May 2021, instructing Wellington Free Ambulance to:
Develop and implement a fatigue risk management policy that includes but is not limited to:
Application of a smart rostering or shift work design to reduce the risk of fatigue
Develop and implement monitoring checks to ensure the fatigue risk management policy is working.
Due by 30 July 2021.
The health, safety and wellbeing of our people and our patients is paramount.
As an organisation we continuously look at how we can mitigate fatigue. We have some controls in place already including our resource deployment procedure, reporting system, supervision, rostered leave and investment in equipment to reduce manual handling load.
These controls are continuously being worked on, and it is our priority that the new fatigue risk management policy that is being defined in consultation with our staff will include changes to ensure these controls are formalised and monitored for effectiveness.
The level of workload for our staff has been increasing over a number of years and is therefore unsustainable going forward. We are working with our staff, our Health and Safety representatives, our Health and Safety Committee and our Unions to ensure we create a fatigue risk management policy with a number of both existing and new controls in line with WorkSafe’s Improvement Notice. These controls include; environmental, policies and procedures, education and information, adequate resources and management of mental, emotional and physical demands of the work undertaken.
We recognise our commitment to the Health and Safety at Work Act and the improvements we need to undertake to support our workers on an ongoing basis.
We will respond to WorkSafe’s Improvement Notice and continue our work to protect all our workers, patients, community and whānau from harm, as our primary duty of care.