St John New Zealand

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St John New Zealand

Motto	First to care
Formation	April 30, 1885
Type	Charitable organisation
Headquarters	St John House, 114 The Terrace, Wellington
Location	New Zealand
Chief Executive	Jaimes Wood
Staff	7,070 volunteers and 2,148 paid staff (being 1,306 FTEs)^[1]
Website	http://www.stjohn.org.nz/

St John ambulances in Auckland.

St John New Zealand (also often referred to as St John Ambulance of New Zealand) is a charitable organisation providing healthcare services to the New Zealand public. Services include emergency and non-emergency ambulance treatment and transport, first aid training, and first aid supplies. The organisation is funded by Ministry of Health and District Health Board funds (via ambulance service contracts), ACC levies, part and full charges to patients, plus donations and fundraising.^[2]^[3]

1 History
2 Statistics
3 Issues
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

A branch of the St John Ambulance was first founded in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1885. Further branches quickly spread across the country providing first aid and patient transport and in 1945, due to the efforts of St John in New Zealand during the Second World War, the organisation was elevated to a full Priory, with the Governor-General of New Zealand as the Prior.

During the 1970s and 1980s much restructuring took place in response to changing social and economic conditions, moving away from the traditional militaristic structure and resulting in the current modern organisation.

Today, St John New Zealand is a major health service provider in New Zealand. They provide 86% of the emergency and non-emergency ambulance cover for the New Zealand population,^[4] emergency care and first aid at public events, support phonelines for the elderly and house-bound, hospital patient transport, public first aid training, health products and a youth programme.

[edit] Statistics

The organisation treated or transported 322,644 patients in the year ending 30 June 2007, attending 249,664 separate incidents. The 551 ambulances or operational vehicles (based at 185 stations) covered over 14.5 million kilometres in the same time. Staff also attended 8,305 events.^[1] Demand for St John services has been growing steadily in the last years, with the organisation reporting increases of 6-8% per year during the last decade.^[5]

[edit] Issues

St John has reported that funding issues and problems with staffing have dangerously increased the number of single-person ambulance call-outs, mainly but not only in rural areas. Normally two staff are considered the only safe solution both for patient and staff safety (this also allows one person to drive the ambulance to the hospital, while the other treats the patient(s)). St John have noted that the issue could be fixed for about NZ$ 5 million per year, but Ministry of Health officials have noted that they consider some two-person-callouts as an inefficient use of resources.^[6]^[7]^[8]

In 2008, St John reported that attacks and abuse directed at their ambulance officers was a growing concern. Around 70 incidents had occurred within the last three financial years, with a number of additional incidents not officially reported. St John considers that a growing lack of respect towards its staff is in part due to reality tv programs such as ER, where treatment tended to be speedy and extremely successful, when in reality, ambulance officers often cannot save patients in the most difficult cases.^[9]