Collecting together our Primary Stars to help you become a future star

The primary care sector celebrated its stars with a grand gala evening back in February this year,

Few attending the glittering awards evening at Shed 10 in downtown Auckland could have anticipated that four weeks later the country would be at Alert Level 4 battling the coronavirus outbreak.

Since that exciting night, the sector has faced unprecedented challenges on its staff and its models of care; challenges that provide new opportunities to showcase great work in the primary care sector.

Entries to New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora close in just two weeks. You can enter here

Gathered below are the stories of this year’s Primary Stars. Take a read and find some inspiration for your own entry.

ACC Supreme Award (and practice manager of the year)

A focus on relationships and kindness has rained success down on Adrian Tucker as the “superstar” winner of the ACC Supreme Award in the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

Named GlaxoSmithKline Practice/Business Manager of the Year at the awards ceremony, Mr Tucker went on to scoop the ACC Supreme Award.

The former electrician – now manager of one of New Zealand’s largest general practices, Lower Hutt’s Ropata Health, which has nearly 20,000 patients – was dumbfounded. Read more

Green Cross Health Outstanding Contribution to Health

Linda Bryant emits a restless energy. Answering questions hands-free on her mobile phone as she drives into current hometown Wellington, Dr Bryant seems to have a lot going through her mind.

“I love change,” the multi-award-winning pharmacist says, when asked why, at age 64, she is still working so hard.

The winner of the Green Cross Health Outstanding Contribution to Health Award at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora, she has a number of roles. They include clinical advisory pharmacist and pharmacist prescriber at two high-needs practices, in Porirua and Newtown, Wellington.

The awards judges said Dr Bryant had amassed an incredible range of accomplishments and made a huge contribution to the health sector, colleagues, clients and the nation. Read more

Medtech GP of the Year

When John Elliott learned he was up for the GP of the Year Award, he was in North Shore Hospital after suffering a heart attack.

It was a small one, he says, and he has two stents in his heart arteries to show for it.

For many people of his age – he’s now 65 – a heart attack necessitating angioplasty would shout “take a breather”.

But the north-west Auckland doctor, who took out the Medtech GP of the Year accolade in February at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora, seems deaf to that. Read more

Total Healthcare General Practice of the Year

Tongan Health Society is looking to go international only months after claiming the Total Healthcare General Practice of the Year title at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

The practice is completing due diligence on a plan to open a private, satellite clinic in the Kingdom of Tonga.

The society runs three medical centres in Auckland – Onehunga, Kelston and Panmure and six school clinics across south Auckland. Read more

Practice nurse of the year

Pauline Fitzgerald’s advocacy for her patients extends far beyond the clinic walls.

“Working in a marae, where she can access the community services her patients need, is where she is in her home,” GP Matire Harwood says of Ms Fitzgerald.

Dr Harwood works with Ms Fitzgerald at Auckland’s Papakura Marae Clinic, with an enrolled population of 92 per cent Māori and Pasifika.

She says Ms Fitzgerald lives and works with the words of US civil rights activist Maya Angelou in mind: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.” Read more

College of Nurses Aotearoa NZ Nurse Practitioner of the Year

Jackie Clapperton is one of a kind. Mrs Clapperton, who is based on the East Cape, is the country’s first intensive care paramedic and nurse practitioner.

Being unique in doing both jobs at once, she tells New Zealand Doctor, led her to nominate herself in the College of Nurses Aotearoa NZ Nurse Practitioner of the Year category of the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora.

Mrs Clapperton remembers getting the phone call late last year advising she had been named a finalist, and celebrating with a “sneaky” glass of wine over dinner with husband Shane, also an intensive care paramedic (and her boss at St John in Tairāwhiti). Read more

Community or Primary Healthcare Pharmacist of the Year Award

High-achieving Leanne Te Karu is scrambling to process the praise piled upon her after winning the Community or Primary Healthcare Pharmacist of the Year Award at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

The judges commended the “phenomenal” contribution of Ms Te Karu (Ngāti Rangi and Muaūpoko) to the sector and said she is a “leader in every sense of the word”.

“Her obvious compassion and willingness to help at all levels of health and with everybody she comes in contact with makes Leanne an exceptional person.” Read more

Pharmacy Guild Community Pharmacy of the Year and Research and Education Award

Winning Pharmacy Guild Community Pharmacy of the Year was not the only award Christchurch’s Longhurst Pharmacy picked up at the gala night.

Together with Riccarton & Longhurst Physio, they won the Research and Education Award with its osteoarthritis programme.

“I didn’t expect it at all!” says pharmacy manager Katrina Azer.

“One award was good enough but two is unbelievable,” she says. Read more

Pharmaceutical Society innovation in service delivery award

Before specialising in sports and musculoskeletal medicine, Stephen Kara was a GP and he believed GPs should be able to access MRI

technology.

Now ProCare’s clinical lead for High Tech Imaging (HTI), Dr Kara uses the analogy of new medicines to explain the motivation behind the project.

A new medicine will be released by Pharmac, but at first it is only specialists who can access it. Eventually, under guidelines, GPs can prescribe it. Read more

ACC Patient Safety Award

General practice alumni of Waitemata's DHB’s award-winning Safety in Practice quality improvement programme are singing its praises.

Its ethos has well and truly taken root at west Auckland clinics Swanson Medical and Health New Lynn, say the clinical leaders there.

Health New Lynn nurse leader Ann Davis and GP-owner Peter Woolford are two of the practice’s “champions” helping to embed changes made during the three-year programme.

Compulsory modules on best practice management of medicines such as blood-thinner warfarin were a wake-up call, Ms Davis says. Read more

Good Sort Award

It’d be fair to say Louise Shambrook won the Sanofi Good Sort Award at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora in a canter.

As Taradale Medical Centre business manager she has become an evangelistic volunteer for Parkrun, an international collective of semi-formal joggers who gather at various parks at 8am each Saturday to time themselves over a set course.

Ms Shambrook sees the events as therapy; it’s less about your time and more about being part of a group and doing something beneficial. Read more

BDO Business Achievement Award

Twenty years ago, the forerunner of Southern Rehab began life in Canterbury with no contract and no patients, but a team approach to injury rehabilitation.

The firm grew into the South Island-wide interdisciplinary provider, with 150-plus staff, that took out the BDO Business Achievement Award at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

The award marked a transition. Medical director, musculoskeletal specialist and former GP John MacVicar says that, after two decades, the firm

could grow no further within the South Island. It was sold last year and amalgamated with North Island-based Habit Group. Read more

Best Youth or Senior Health Service Award

Health and wellbeing service Piki is teaching young people how to “cook” rather than feeding them, says Tū Ora Compass PHO chief executive Martin

Hefford.

The service, which offers supportive therapy, peer support and an emotional wellness app, continues to be in high demand. The service connects with over 3000 people and holds about 10,000 consultations a year. Read more

Medispace Good Space Award

The practice that battled to build its award-winning space is now rising to the battle of fighting COVID-19 in a lockdown.

Castlecliff Health took out the Medispace Good Space Award at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards|He Tohu Mauri Ora, with the $1.7 million practice building it opened in February 2018 following a two-and-a-half year battle with red tape.

“Winning the award after all the battles we had is in some ways like a vindication that we were on the right track,” says Castlecliff GP Praveen Thadigiri who bought the Very Low Cost Access practice in 2014. Read more

Blue Star Best Supplier Service, Product or Campaign Award

COVID-19 hasn’t stopped the producers of an award-winning type 2 diabetes educational booklet from making improvements to it.

In February, diabetes medicine company Sanofi and health support programme design firm Atlantis Healthcare were honoured at the inaugural New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

Called Taking Control: A guide to help you live a better life with diabetes, the booklet is aimed at helping patients who are newly-diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and their clinicians manage the condition. Read more

Spark Health Excellence in Information Technology Award

Total Healthcare’s battle-tested disease burden system has gone live for COVID-19.

The south Auckland PHO’s general manager Kate Moodabe says the system proved vital in marshalling vaccines and vaccinators during last year’s measles outbreak.

It will now help track COVID-19’s expected spread across Auckland region, pulling data from Tāmaki Health’s general practice network, Ms Moodabe says. About 10 years ago, she asked her small in-house IT team to develop a way for the PHO to get a real-time picture of its chronic and acute disease burden.

Tāmaki Health’s practice network serves a substantially high-deprivation and high-needs population. Read more

https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/print-archive/total-focus-phos-invisible-it-powered-hand-again-poised-fight-disease

ProPharma Pharmacy Technician of the Year Award

Juggling full-time work, with raising two children, planning a wedding and studying for her Level 6 specialist technician course are all in a day’s work for Kapiti pharmacy technician Samantha Burgess.

And now the Life Pharmacy Coastlands’ superstar tech has been honoured for all her hard work with the ProPharma Pharmacy Technician of the Year Award.

Mrs Burgess (nee Thornbury) has worked for Life Pharmacy Coastlands for eight years and is described as the “complete package as a technician” and the “backbone” of the dispensary by her boss, pharmacist Martin Lowis. Read more

Southern Cross Health Insurance Primary and Secondary Integration Award

Fresh out of medical school and working as a house officer at Tauranga Hospital, Jono Hooger brug felt a bit lost – and decided to do something about it.
It was 2013, and Dr Hoogerbrug found learning on the wards unnecessarily difficult.

“I noticed there were things I was learning for the first time that it felt like there were better ways to do it, better ways for someone like myself to learn systems,” the Otago Medical School graduate says.

Fast-forward to February 2020 and the New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora. The newly vocationally registered GP had the honour of accepting the Southern Cross Health Insurance Primary and Secondary Integration Award for an electronic consultation programme called E-Consult, created by Waitematā DHB’s i3. Read more

See the full list of 2020 winner and finalists here