Rural practice manager honoured for tireless work for Hanmer community

“I gained an appreciation for how different rural is but how important community is to live in such a remote area”

The tireless work of an IT consultant turned jack-of-all-trades rural practice manager for Hanmer Springs Health Centre was honoured this week with a community services award. 

Hurunui District mayor Marie Black presented the award to Paul Walmsley for his “many roles and hats” supporting the Canterbury alpine village community, including practice manager, ambulance first responder, civil defence supporter and local community trust member.  

“[Paul] works tirelessly to ensure we have doctors, nurses and health professionals to serve the needs of our community,” says the award citation. “He often extends this help and support to both the staff and their families.” 

The citation goes on to list his work during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, including supporting the community trust’s food bank, ensuring medically at-risk residents had access to emergency electricity, and leading the push to get a community car and a pool of volunteers to transport residents to hospital and other appointments.

Mr Walmsley, who has lived in Hanmer Springs since 2016 and has been the health centre’s practice manager since late 2020, says he sees the award as being for all the people he works with within the community. 

These include the health centre team members who helped him respond to the challenge of being thrown into the pandemic “proper” within months of taking on the job. 

After initially being told rural practices “can’t vaccinate”, he says, he helped draw the Hurunui rural practices together, with the support of Waitaha PHO, to offer a rural vaccination programme, including outreach in the former Canterbury DHB-owned brightly painted Jabber Waka mobile vaccination clinic and special-event walk-in clinics for locals and tourists. 

“We all dressed up to make it a magical experience for young children to come to the ‘magic bus’ for their COVID vaccinations,” he says. Mr Walmsley dressed as a pirate to match his “Captain” nickname. 

The English-trained computer scientist and IT consultant says his first introduction to the health system was working on a technical project for the former Canterbury DHB soon after he arrived in New Zealand in 2005. He also taught supercomputing to University of Canterbury postgraduate students for a number of years before moving to Hanmer Springs in 2016 and initially continuing to work remotely as an IT consultant, project leader and his other passion, coaching, which includes career and health coaching. 

Taking on the role of practice manager, after also becoming a first responder for the local Hato Hone St John ambulance service in 2018, felt a good fit with the work he’d done over the years, he says.

Since 2020, he led the small team of first responder volunteers, with the support of the Culverden station manager, before stepping down earlier this year due to workload.  

“I was living and breathing health 24/7 because I was basically responding to ambulance calls and the health centre.” But his phone remains on 24/7 for the centre’s PRIME (primary response in medical emergencies) clinicians in case they need logistic support to respond to accidents and medical emergencies in the alpine pass area. 

The reality of the phrase, “We live in rural, we are different” first came home to him after he moved to Hanmer, located at the base of the Southern Alps, about 150km from Christchurch, he says.

“I gained an appreciation for how different rural is but how important community is to live in such a remote area. The services just aren’t available that easily.

“It’s good that we are finally getting a voice for rural [health] to be identified in its own right and [with issues] that need to be addressed.”