Ambulances rush to net

By ADAM GIFFORD

The New Zealand Ambulance Education Council has turned to the internet to train people involved in ambulance work.

The newly formed industry training organisation has customised an Australian product, Just About Everything Online, which is an internet or intranet version of Just About Everything a Manager Needs to Know by Queenslanders Neil Flanagan and Jarvis Finger.

Chief executive Barbara Gladding says the people who need the information are among those least likely to have access to it.

"Two thirds of the work force are unpaid and donate their time to ambulance services," Ms Gladding said. "A number of these are located in rural communities, managing small stations. It is not practical for many of them to leave their towns and travel to the metropolitan centres for non-clinical training."

She said JAEO took a common-sense approach to solving management problems, and the site had an intuitive, user-friendly delivery of information.

Ms Gladding said the site would not replace formal management education for ambulance service managers, but was a tool which could be used on a "just in time" basis to help them to deal with everyday situations.

Several major Australian organisations use the system on their corporate intranets, but New Zealand agent Allan Price, of Plum Press, in Wellington, said the NZAEC was the first organisation to implement the customised subscriber approach to the product. He said it cost the NZAEC less than $20,000 to customise its site, http://nzaec.justabouteverything.com, which meant creating about 50 extra pages.

It intends to recoup costs and fund further development by selling annual subscriptions of about $65 to the 3000 people involved in ambulance work. A demo is available on the site or at www.justabouteverything.com.

The online resource is structured from the principle that managing is more than planning and organising activities. It is about making things happen by managing ourselves and those with whom we work.

It is organised into three sections: How to manage yourself, how to manage others, and how to manage the organisation.

Mr Price said many management tools were far too theoretical. Just About Everything Online was created for the practical hands-on manager.

"People don't have time to go to one-day courses. Increasingly there is need for people to get 'just in time' knowledge and education to overcome their immediate problem and work out where to go next.

"There are thousands of management books out there, but the good stuff is mixed with hypotheses and jargon," Mr Price said.

He said at Queensland Rail, where the system was originally developed, the company was giving its managers copies of the book as well as giving all staff access to the on-line version.

Dr Flanagan and Mr Finger, who is also known as the author of several books on school management, are working on a second volume of the Just About Everything book as well as complementary volumes on specific fields like retail management.