Auckland doctor training partners with Bay of Plenty

Auckland doctor training partners with Bay of Plenty

Media Release - University of Auckland
25 January 2017

Medical students from the University of Auckland will have an opportunity to train in Whakatane from this year with the launch of its new regional rural medical training programme in the Bay of Plenty.

This year for the first time, 18 fifth year medical students from Auckland will be based at Tauranga Hospital and spend nearly three months placement training at Whakatane Hospital.

“Our goal is for half of all Auckland medical graduates to choose a career in General Practice and at least 30 percent to work outside urban centres,” said the University’s Dean of Medical and Health Sciences, Professor John Fraser.

“To achieve this, we need to partner with regional health boards, hospitals and general practices to provide high quality clinical training, so that students experience the benefits and joys of practising medicine outside big city hospitals.”

The powhiri to launch the new programme was held at Whakatane Hospital and attended by executives and staff from the Bay of Plenty Health Board, the hospital, and the University.

“I cannot stress how important our partnership is with the Bay of Plenty DHB and Whakatane Hospital – after all, these students in your care will likely be your next junior doctors and GPs,” he said.

“This is an important step in our commitment to providing quality regional and rural immersion experiences for New Zealand’s future doctors.”

Professor Fraser said the decisions young doctors make in choosing to work in urban versus rural or choosing specialist over generalist careers were complex and were not all influenced by their education.

“One simple fact that is supported by extensive research, is that medical students who have a high quality regional experience are more likely to return there as qualified doctors.

“The University of Auckland medical programme is not, as some have argued, about training doctors for Auckland, although given its proportional size, Auckland region will always be the home for a large chunk of our graduates,” he said.

“Our medical programme is fully committed to training young doctors who are willing to work anywhere in New Zealand and across all disciplines, and many of our graduates can be found enriching small communities from Dargaville to Bluff.”

Professor Fraser said the Government’s strategy to reduce New Zealand’s over reliance on overseas trained doctors, was to increase the number of domestic graduates by 50 percent over a period of 10 years, grow the national GP training scheme and limit the availability of specialist training places.

Medical graduate numbers are growing from 7 per 100,000 in 2010 to 12 per 100,000 by 2020.

“This will put New Zealand equal to or ahead of the UK, Canada and the USA,” he said. “But as a consequence, it increases the demand for training places in hospitals and general practices across the country.

The powhiri also welcomed the first group of fifth year medical students who will be based in Tauranga and will each train for 11 weeks at Whakatane Hospital this year.

There will be a total of 58 medical students from the University in the Bay of Plenty this year with 24 fourth year, 18 fifth year and 16 sixth year students based at the University and BOP DHB Tauranga Hospital Clinical School.

The fifth year medical students at Whakatane will be doing hospital based and general practice based placements.

For the University, this is the second Regional-Rural programme – the first was the successful Pukawakawa programme that is based at the Northland DHB and includes training for medical students at Whangarei Hospital and rural hospitals around that region.

ENDS

© Scoop Media