NZNO nurses, healthcare assistants and some midwives plan to strike from 9am on Wednesday 30 July to 9am on Thursday 31 July. Patient safety is our priority and our hospitals will remain open. Continue to attend all appointments unless we have contacted you directly to reschedule.
Cardiology involves the diagnosis and care of people with heart conditions. We provide cardiology services to Wellington, Hutt and Kapiti at Wellington Regional Hospital.
Cardiology outpatient clinics are in the clinical measurement unit on the ground floor of the main Wellington Regional Hospital building.
Street address:
Wellington Regional Hospital
49 Riddiford Street
Newtown
Wellington 6021
Our cardiology team provides care to people in hospital.
We also run outpatient clinics at:
When you come in for an appointment, we will assess your symptoms. This usually takes 60 to 90 minutes.
We will also:
You need to attend regular appointments if you have a pacemaker or defibrillator implanted.
This is so:
Appointment should be every 6 to 12 months. They take about 30 minutes.
The visit will involve:
The technologists will then run various tests and record the findings.
A letter will be sent to your healthcare provider to inform them of your visit and the results of the tests.
A small team based in Wellington focuses on investigating and treating inherited cardiac disease.
Part of a national service, the team is made up of:
The Wellington branch of the Cardiac Inherited Diseases Group works closely with Genetic Health Service New Zealand.
Genetic Health Service New Zealand
Cardiac Inherited Diseases Group
The cardiothoracic service provides care for people with heart or lung problems who require surgery or other similar invasive tests and treatments.
We treat people from:
Heart or lung transplants and most paediatric surgery cases are referred to Auckland.
The cardiothoracic service provide emergency (acute) and planned (elective) surgeries such as:
Your healthcare provider (such as your GP) will refer you to one of our outpatient clinics if they are concerned about your heart and want a specialist opinion.
Each referral is prioritised depending on urgency, so those with more serious conditions will be seen first.
A referral for this service must come from a healthcare provider, such as a GP or hospital specialist.
Your GP may refer you for emergency (acute) or planned (elective) surgery.
If you are having heart surgery, you may also be referred to a cardiologist for ongoing care after the operation.
Your cardiologist will refer you for surgery. Cardiologists are specialists who treat heart diseases but don't perform operations. They refer patients from Wellington and the wider region for consideration of heart surgery.
The referring cardiologist is responsible for arranging for any tests required such as angiograms or ultrasound heart scans to be carried out..
Our team will then provide a recommendation to the referring cardiologist. This is usually further tests, a non-surgical plan or recommendation for surgery.
These might be new tests, or repeating previous tests if they were too long ago. This is to ensure that our team have the necessary information to give advice on treatment options.
Surgery is not always the best treatment option. There are procedures and medications that are sometimes the best treatment for coronary or heart valve disease. Cardiologists carry out these procedures. Patients from outside of Wellington may need to travel to Wellington Regional Hospital for these procedures.
Patients are then placed on the waiting list for surgery. We may still need to run more tests before having the surgery — for example all patients planning heart valve operations will need to have had a dental assessment and complete their dental treatments before having their heart operation
A variety of specialists may refer patients for consideration for lung surgery. They may need to arrange for scans or lung tests before making the referral.
Our team will then advise on whether surgery may be beneficial, and any other tests or treatments that may be required. Sometimes they recommend that patients see a surgeon in clinic to discuss surgery options.
If the referral is related to a possible cancer, a cancer nurse coordinator will help manage the various tests and treatments patients need.
Non-surgical lung procedures are dealt with according to clinical priority.
Once surgery has been recommended and tests completed, patients are placed on a wait list for surgery. The cardiothoracic team send out a letter explaining this in a pack with other information, which may include:
The wait list is not a simple queue. Every person's need for surgery is prioritised according to:
People are added or removed from the list every week and priorities may change. The most urgently needed operations happen within a few days of being put on the list. Less urgent heart operations are expected to happen within 90 days of being added to the list. Lung operations for cancer are subject to the “faster cancer treatment” target.
Health targets — Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
A cardiothoracic liaison nurse manages the wait list.
They may call you to make sure that the information pack has been received, and discuss what happens next. They also contact you when there is a date for your operation.
If you are on the wait list you should be available and ready for your operation.
You should tell the liaison nurse if:
Find out how the National Travel Assistance scheme supports eligible people who need to travel long distances or travel frequently for specialist treatment.
If you think you may be eligible for this, register with the scheme to check your entitlement as soon as you are on the wait list for surgery.
Your surgeon is usually allocated when the date of your operation is booked in.
Sometimes dates have to change due to urgent needs of other patients, or other factors. A different surgeon may then do the operation.
Elective patients are usually admitted to the ward the day before their operation, and meet their surgeon then.
Acute patients will already be in hospital, or transferred to Wellington Regional Hospital from their local hospital a few days before their operation.
Inpatient services are based in Ward 6 South, the heart and lung unit.
You are discharged from the ward when you have had your operations or treatments and are well enough to not need hospital care anymore. If you are from out of Wellington and have been transferred urgently by air ambulance for an operation you may still need to make arrangements to get home.
If you live alone, you may wish to arrange for whānau or friends to stay for a few days after you get home from the operation. This is especially important after heart operations (coronary artery bypass or heart valve surgery) when we recommend you have a support person available for a week.
Alternatively, you could arrange convalescent care, or access support — social workers can assess what support may be available, and whether these are funded or not.
You should not drive for at least 4 weeks after having heart surgery.
Follow up after discharge depends on what is required. Most people will be given a prescription for medications to get from a pharmacy. People are often asked to see a GP a few days after leaving hospital. Surgeons or other specialists sometimes want to see people in clinic a few weeks after their operation.
People who have had heart operations are usually referred to a cardiac rehabilitation or specialist cardiac nurse service. These support recovery and ongoing wellbeing, as well as reducing patients' risk of future heart events.
