NZ Losing Millions Due To Lack of Support for Doctors

27 October 2011

“New Zealand Losing Millions of Investment Dollars Due To Lack of Support for Doctors”

New Zealand trained doctors will continue to pack their bags for greener pastures at a huge cost to taxpayers unless urgent attention is given to improving the state of the specialist workforce.

ASMS, the union representing senior doctors and dentists, is concerned at the lack of progress on a blueprint agreed with DHBs last year to address an ongoing shortage of medical specialists. It has produced a publication Specialist Workforce Alert which summarises the disastrous and financially irresponsible effects of what it describes as a retention crisis.

Executive Director Ian Powell says one of the flow-on effects of the abysmal state of the specialist workforce is that resident medical officers (also known as junior doctors), who are our potential future specialists are leaving the country, as they don’t feel they are receiving adequate support.

“The government’s Resident Medical Officers Commission (2009) has identified that among the key reasons resident doctors are leaving New Zealand is linked to the state of the specialist workforce. The Commission highlighted that lack of mentoring, training, support, oversight, and professional interest was driving some resident doctors to leave the country or the profession.”

Ian Powell says that specialists want to be able to provide resident medical officers with the support they need, but the pressure on their time is too great.

“The two issues go hand in hand – to fix the resident doctor workforce crisis measures must be introduced to fix the specialist recruitment and retention crisis. Until that is done a substantial part of the huge government investments going into doctor training each year will continue to be lost offshore.”

Ian Powell says it is vital for the specialist workforce to grow at a faster rate so it can effectively respond to the training and support needs of our New Zealand trained future specialists.

Latest figures from the Medical Council of New Zealand show just how urgent it is for the Government to take action, he says. The data reveals that of the medical graduates that first registered in 2000, just six out of 10, still held a New Zealand practising certificate 10 years later.

“The statistics should be a wake-up call as what it is telling us that out of a class of 286 graduates who registered as a doctor, about 114 are no longer practising in New Zealand.

“This trend comes at a huge cost to the New Zealand taxpayer. It costs $500,000 to train each medical graduate and another $1 million if they continue through their post-graduate years to train as a specialist. That’s a huge amount of investment being lost offshore.”

“While New Zealand doctors will always look to gain overseas experience, it is vital that they are not lost forever,” concluded Mr Powell.

For more information visit www.asms.org.nz

ENDS

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