Clinical care at Wellington Free Ambulance

Clinical care

Our Clinical Governance team takes care of policy, practice and processes for continual improvement and supports all staff at Wellington Free Ambulance to deliver excellent patient care.

The back of a patient on a stretcher in an ambulance

Our clinical practice is overseen by Executive Medical Director Dr Erica Douglass, alongside Medical Directors Dr Andy Swain and Dr Dave O'Byrne.

The clinical team works with all parts of the business to make sure our patients receive the best possible care. They:

Design and regularly review Clinical Procedures and Guidelines that all paramedics use in their day-to-day work.
Constantly review paramedic national and international sector standards to keep pace with today’s best practice knowledge and changing service needs.
Take part in sector wide clinical initiatives and new developments.
Carry out clinical audits and monitor our practice against international best practice Clinical Quality Indicators.
Review and share organisational learnings from complex cases.
Review and approve new clinical equipment.

Clinical Procedures and Guidelines

This national document guides our clinical practice to ensure safe and consistent care for all of our patients.

These guidelines are presented for informative purposes only. Only those with an authority to practice issued by Wellington Free Ambulance may use these guidelines for the provision of patient care. These guidelines may change from time to time and Wellington Free Ambulance does not guarantee their accuracy once downloaded or printed.

Clinical Procedures and Guidelines

If you wish to make any formal comments or enquiries regarding these guidelines please contact: Chair of the National Ambulance Sector Clinical Working Group c/o Ambulance New Zealand, PO Box 714, Wellington.

Requesting patient information

We take great care to ensure the privacy of your health information.

We collect information about you and your health to provide appropriate care, to keep you and others safe, to carry out teaching and research, and for statistical purposes.

Be assured that your information is kept secure and only authorised people have access to it. This may include other agencies, where authorised by law.

Accessing health information

If you have been a patient of ours and/or have contacted our Clinical Communications Centre, you have a right to request access to any personal health information that we hold and which is readily retrievable.

To apply for information to be released to you, download and complete the appropriate form below with the required documents stated in the checklist. Submit the completed form and all required attachments to:

Wellington Free Ambulance
Clinical Quality
PO Box 601
Wellington 6140

Or email Improvement.team@wfa.org.nz. If you would prefer to have this form posted to you call 04 499 9909.

Adverse events

We take providing high-quality patient care extremely seriously. We strive to do our very best for patients and their families every time we attend an incident.

Wellington Free Ambulance vehicle

We have a process for identifying, investigating, and learning from events where patient care has not been to the standard we would expect. This involves a team of our clinical, operational and 111 communications centre experts coming together regularly to review information received via patient feedback, complaints, or from our own quality assurance process.

Every investigation results in a set of recommendations for improvement, and as much as possible we keep the patient and their family informed of our progress and findings. As well as our own investigation, serious (SAC1 and SAC2) events are reported to NASO and the Health Quality and Safety Commission.

For information about how adverse events are coded, and to view previous events visit the Ministry of Health website.

We use the World Health Organization event codes to classify all events. More information on these codes can be found in the National Adverse Events Reporting Policy 2017. A copy of this policy is available here.

What we do

Clinical care

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Clinical care

Our Clinical Governance team takes care of policy, practice and processes for continual improvement and supports all staff at Wellington Free Ambulance to deliver excellent patient care.

Clinical Procedures and Guidelines

This national document guides our clinical practice to ensure safe and consistent care for all of our patients.

Requesting patient information

We take great care to ensure the privacy of your health information.

Adverse events

We take providing high-quality patient care extremely seriously. We strive to do our very best for patients and their families every time we attend an incident.

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