Orderly Supervisor Ewen Pycroft congratulating Orderly Craig Stewart
Craig Stewart of Christchurch Hospital is something of a groundbreaker.
In 2014 he became the first orderly in the country to achieve New Zealand’s first ever orderly qualification, the National Certificate in Health, Disability and Aged Support (Orderlies) Level 3.
Four years on, Craig is the first orderly in New Zealand to achieve the New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing Social and Community Services Community Facilitation Level 4.
Craig already had 15 years of experience when he was offered the opportunity to have his skills recognised and get his first qualification through workplace training. He was initially unsure if he could do any training or studying again, having left school 40 years ago.
“Once I got into it, I really enjoyed it and passed! So glad I’ve done that,” says Craig.
After that, he was given an assessor role. Assessors are an important part of the workplace training cycle. They oversee the formal marking process and provide mentoring and support to their trainees in the workplace.
In this new role, Craig realised that he needed more tools to be able to help his colleagues get through their training and to be more valuable to them, as some of them had literacy and numeracy difficulties.
So along with other educators from Canterbury DHB, he studied and completed the National Certificate in Adult Literacy and Numeracy Education Level 5 with the support of Careerforce.
Manager Employer Services at Careerforce Andrew Saunders highlighted the alignment of visions between Canterbury DHB and Careerforce in his speech at the graduation ceremony. Both organisations are committed to providing better health outcomes to the community. He said, “You (Canterbury DHB) do that by providing great care and service to the community, and we do it by supporting you in training the people who are delivering that care and service.”
The DHB has invested in training many of their support staff including the orderlies, health assistants, dental assistants and cleaners to help provide even better health outcomes for the people in our communities.
Courtesy – Canterbury DHB CEO Update June 2018