Excellence in Leadership

Inspire and lead - Ambulance Tasmania

Ambulance Tasmania

Team: Cassandra McKenzie, Joe Acker, Jordan Emery

Ambulance Tasmania is a dynamic organisation, growing rapidly in the context of dispersed geography, significant increases in operational demand, an incongruent growth in the maturity of systems and a strong sense of passion, community and commitment amongst its operational workforces. Operational Readiness and Transformation (OR&T) is a program of work which centres on the mechanisms required to effect meaningful change in a challenging, high tempo operational environment and which focuses on building the structural elements of teamwork, transparency, collaboration, staff recognition & support and functional harmony for Ambulance Tasmania. Based on a corporate structure of shared services, the utility in undertaking a program like OR&T is the ability to leverage appropriate stakeholders without overwhelm, to exemplify, build and create a culture of shared leadership & knowledge expansion and to build and promote sustained high performance of Ambulance Tasmania operationally and culturally. Supported by adjacent strategic plans including the Cultural improvement action plan, and the refresh of Ambulance Tasmania’s strategic plan, OR&T defines the required activities from inception to benefits realisation.

The importance of systems to reduce the likelihood of error, to create purposeful and repeatable outcomes and to support the welfare and practice of our staff is reinforced by the nature and intent of the OR&T program. Beginning with the Communications Centre, what became obvious for Ambulance Tasmania was multiple occasions where systems of operation worked well unilaterally, with little evidence of face value integration.

Researched examples personified a distinct lack of ‘leaning in’ with an immense draw on the role and function of the Emergency Medical Dispatcher as the orchestrator of all things dispatch – and whose role has come to symbolise the harmonisation of all operational systems at a central point of intersection.

What was required was that each system needed to understand and be aware of how its neighbour systems operated, so leaning in could be achieved at appropriate times and in appropriate ways. This was noted to occur because of high levels of altruism and commitment amongst staff, which was at times poorly controlled by the systems employed to support the overall function of operations and service delivery. This led to duplication and isolation for some regions of AT.

The OR&T program also provides, by nature of its implementation, a significant opportunity to focus on and improve the safety, quality, and performance of the Operations Leadership team as a pivotal interface with patients, their families, and our partner agencies.