About Wicksteed Medical Centre

Wicksteed Medical in Whanganui is a busy practice with a wide range of patients. We currently have five doctors, nine nurses, six experienced admins, and a practice manager. Complementing our primary health care team are two HiP’s and two Health coaches. We are part of the Locality pilot in Whanganui with a care coordinator, kaiawhina, physio and pharmacist to help with our most vulnerable patients.  We have 27 staff caring for 8000 patients.

We are part of Whanganui Regional Health Network, our PHO. They are supporting the locality pilot on partnership with Te Oranganui.  

We have a cohesive team culture. Our staff are friendly and kind, with a passion to deliver best practice primary health care services to our community.  We are located in the heart of Wanganui at 220 Wicksteed St. We operate as five team hubs with doctors and nurses working closely together.  We have a wonderful cohort of patients and many families have been coming to Wicksteed for generations.   We are close to the town centre and we have a Pharmacy right next door.

We use Medtech Evolution 7.0 as our Patient Management System, and we also have Manage My Health, so patients can look at their results and book appointments.  We have good IT support through a local provider. We have strong collegial relations with primary and secondary services, as well as pharmacy and allied health.

Of our 8000 patients, 22% are Māori or Pasifica.  Our Q5 patients are another 20% of our population. We are proactive in ensuring equity.

We are Foundation accredited and working towards the renewal of our Bronze Cornerstone status. We are a teaching practice and have a strong tradition of encouraging our staff in continued education, providing opportunities to enhance their professional practice.

Approximately one quarter of our patients are over 65 years, with a good spread among the other age groups. We are fortunate to have seen multiple generations of families come through our doors. We love seeing them grow up and have children themselves and we are privileged to care for all their health needs.

We operate two sessions a day, morning and afternoon, and each session has twelve patient appointments.  We typically hold four, urgent, on-the-day appointments for acute needs and these are booked with our reception or nursing team. We are open Monday to Friday.

We conduct full inductions onsite for all new staff members.  We provide ongoing training to keep up to date with regulations. We have weekly peer review, and monthly full team meetings.

We have mandatory training for Privacy, Cultural Safety, Cultural competency, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, via online training.

We have many resources available for all staff to access via our South Link Health Teams platform – Policies and Procedures, Te Reo Māori, Tikanga Māori, Guidelines for Foundation and Cornerstone accreditation.

About Whanganui

Whanganui is a lovely place to live and work. Options include rural housing, beach housing or housing located in the township itself.  There are good schools, including Whanganui Collegiate.

Located on the Whanganui river we have easy access to beaches, rivers, mountains (Ruapehu) and bush.

There is a small plane flying to Auckland return three times per day.  We are only one hour from Palmerston North, which has a larger airport with flights to the South Island.  We are 2.5 hours to Wellington via Transmission Gully and only 2 hours to New Plymouth.

Whanganui has a temperate climate, with most fruit and vegetables flourishing here.

We have an active market each Saturday with a mixture of fruit, vegetables, coffee, cheeses, eggs, honey, flowers and plants being sold, as well as craft products.

Whanganui is renowned for its active art culture, and music also abounds.

Anyone moving here would be welcomed and would enjoy exploring what this community of around 48,000 people has to offer.