About 100 Primary Response in Medical Emergency (Prime) responders from around New Zealand were at the gallery for their annual hui, where they had a refresher course for trauma and medical emergencies and were taught to use some new equipment that had been added to their response kits.
Prime responder and Prime Hui committee member Rob Atkinson said the service used specially trained rural GPs and nurses living in rural areas, to support seriously ill or injured patients when the response time for a St John ambulance service would be significant.
They also provided higher-level medical skills than may otherwise be available, to help the ambulance service in rural communities.
Prime practitioners carry a pager, a Prime response kit and other relevant safety equipment. They are mobilised by the Ambulance Clinical Control Centre following an emergency call.
Mr Atkinson said this year’s Prime Hui 2025 also focused on political discussions about rural health and examined the infrastructure around their capacity to respond to major incidents in the rural sector — not only along the Alpine Fault, but also at major crashes that immediately overwhelm rural resources.
"We’ve provided this hui as a platform for people to come in and get some sense of how they can respond at a community level and how the infrastructure around that community level works in terms of the National Emergency Management Agency and how disaster management is escalated and how communities can be better supported.
"The speakers that we’ve had during the hui have been people who work in disaster management.
"I think it’s important that they Prime responders get insight into how that works at a higher level.
"We also had speakers who worked through Cyclone Gabriel, so we had that on-the-ground representation of the struggles and the challenges that go with actually living within a major incident."
He said those who attended would now head home with a new vision of their role in the community and improve the way that they respond to major casualty incidents.
