The Bay of Plenty and Lakes district health boards are set to benefit from a third medical school at the University of Waikato.
The newly-proposed Waikato Medical School will be a community-engaged, graduate entry medical school based in the Waikato and at about 15 regional clinical education sites throughout the central North Island.
The school's been proposed in response to health workforce shortages, and in particular, shortages of primary care doctors and specialists in provincial and rural centres and hospitals.
Given the expected pattern of retirement of doctors practicing outside the main centres these workforce shortages are expected to worsen in the future unless a new medical school is created.
The medical school is being proposed as part of a strategic alliance between the University of Waikato and the Waikato District Health Board which aims to ensure a close alignment between medical education and health workforce needs in the central North Island.
The medical school will focus on selecting graduate students who are committed to meeting the health care needs of New Zealanders living outside main centres in small cities, provincial towns and rural areas, and particularly high-needs communities.
During their education students will be trained in the use of new technologies for providing health care and will gain practical experience of community-based health and social service partnerships.
University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil Quigley says with only two medical schools, New Zealand currently has one of the lowest ratios of medical schools to population in the OECD and very limited diversity in approach to medical education.
New Zealand is the most heavily dependent OECD country on overseas-trained doctors, each year importing 1100 doctors to meet medical workforce shortages.
'Based on any of those comparators New Zealand should be well advanced in developing a third medical school, and against Australian and UK standards we would already have a third medical school and be considering a fourth,” says Neil.
A business case for the medical school was presented to the government on October 17.
For more information on the proposed medical school, see the website: www.waikato.ac.nz/about/medical-school
4 comments
Quite Agree
Posted on 18-10-2016 20:05 | By Jitter
A third medical school is required. But at Waikato ? So close to Auckland ! To me the obvious place for another medical school is Wellington as we already have one in Dunedin and one in Auckland. One in the middle of the country would be ideal.
Jitter
Posted on 19-10-2016 14:10 | By rastus
Your corespondent 'Jitter' can never be taken seriously - the moment you start talking common sense you have traditionally lost the debate in Gods own. Bureaucratic academics could never suggest anything that makes sense and they wonder why many of us hold them in such contempt! Of course they will always come up with a story to justify their stupidity
importing 1100 doctors?
Posted on 19-10-2016 15:19 | By Crash test dummies
Yes a special category for residency, however the other stat not published is that the imports last 6 months to 3-4 years at most. The entrenched local system is hostile to imports and so all the effort to get more only results in a short term remedy. Add to that of course that Waikato rates as one of the worse Universities in NZ and dropping, so the standard of education excepted is rather minimal. I think an import would be better.
Rural and provincial GPs
Posted on 19-10-2016 15:21 | By Crash test dummies
These are generally older, the younger ones all get trained in NZ then leave to go overseas. Any that stay want to be in the cities and so the shortage exists. The same scenario applies to teachers also. The remedy is to revert back to "bonding" While you have a student loan or 5 years, which ever is longer you go where required. The problem is then solved overnight and in an instant.
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