The release of a report into medical training in Aotearoa New Zealand shows the country's existing medical training programmes have the capacity to train hundreds more doctors – all the Government needs to do is increase the number of students it allows to study medicine and fund those students.
Responding to increasing public calls for more domestically trained doctors, general practitioners and rural doctors, the University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka and Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland say they can train as many as 300 additional doctors annually without the Government spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new facilities.
Professor Warwick Bagg
In Budget 2024, the Government confirmed 25 additional medical places for 2025, half of the 50 previously promised. The two institutions are ready and able to lift their collective intake by a further 100 places in 2026. Together with the 25 additional places confirmed for 2025, this would raise the total annual intake for doctor training from the current level of 589 to 714.
From 2027 onwards, capacity could then be increased incrementally up to a combined intake of 889 across the two universities. This is 300 more than the current intake of 589 annually.
The PwC New Zealand report, 'Medical education in New Zealand: Current state and consideration of future options', comes as the country confronts a health staffing and funding crisis.
Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland Professor Warwick Bagg says both Auckland and Otago universities are ready to step up.
"We are able to leverage existing resources, capability and facilities while deploying our experience and expertise to rapidly increase the intake of trainee doctors."
The PwC New Zealand report details options for alternative training approaches while pointing out that 30 per cent of current medical students are graduates. Options include a National School of Rural Health, first proposed to government in 2017.
Professor Tim Wilkinson
The University of Otago Medical School's Acting Dean, Professor Tim Wilkinson, points out that both medical schools already have teaching facilities and regional placements in regional and rural programmes throughout the country to enable this.
Every year, students from Auckland and Otago are placed in more than 100 different cities, towns and centres. In any given year hundreds of our students will spend time in placements in general practices across these locations, including around 170 students working in specific rural and regional immersion placements.
"The country's biggest problem is not about education facilities. It is about funding more students to study medicine and ensuring sufficient clinical placements around the country for them to learn on the job", Professor Wilkinson says.
Professor Bagg says a significant issue facing efforts to increase student training numbers is the provision of clinical placements. "If the Government incrementally increases student numbers year by year, we expect to be able to work with Te Whatu Ora, hospitals and GPs to provide these places."
He says the demand for doctors and other health professionals is acute. "As a country, we must make decisions that are cost-effective and timely to meet this demand. The future wellbeing of New Zealanders depends on this."
Another solution is to retain the doctors who are educated in New Zealand. Over the past ten years, one in three medical students who have graduated in New Zealand have left the country. Retaining doctors in New Zealand would go a long way to increasing the locally trained medical workforce.
In addition to improving the retention of locally trained doctors, both universities believe the best approach for New Zealand is to use the existing capability within the country's two medical schools rather than build a third medical school, which may not only cost hundreds of millions of dollars but also take more than two years to begin training doctors.
"We are ready to work with the Government, Te Whatu Ora and others who educate health professionals to deliver a health workforce that meets the country's needs."
Read the report here
