Ministers announced the Government’s $604 million health budget to honour a National pre-election promise. Video / Mark Mitchell
A year after he ditched the stethoscope for the steering wheel, dump truck driver Jeff Kai Fong found himself thinking about one of the last patients he treated in a medical career that spanned more than three decades.
The 26-year-old woman was suffering a major anaphylactic response to an allergen and, even after two doses of adrenaline, had “dumped her blood pressure into her boots”, the former emergency physician said.
“She had like a 50 systolic [blood pressure] and you should have like 120. So that means you wouldn’t have a palpable pulse … I managed to get a second [intravenous] line in and we had bags of fluid under our armpits, pumping it into her body as fast as we could.
“She picked up [but] she was 26, so if it went badly that was going to be a f***ing disaster.”
Thinking back on the experience as he drove his 10-tonne, six-wheeler dump truck, the 61-year-old realised how stressful his old life had been.
“I don’t even know how I coped with that. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to it.”
And he won’t be. Kai Fong, an Auckland father and grandfather, is among those this decade who’ve walked away from the high-pressure jobs they’ve devoted much of their working lives to.
It’s not just the acute pressures of helping patients teetering between life and death, but how the overall health system “just grinds you down”, Kai Fong said.
“They change the system every time they change the Government. They never figure out what works. It’s all about management and money … if you under fund something 10 or 20% every year, what do you think you’ll have?
“And then the population just keeps growing. The stress of the job is so bad now that nobody wants to do it.”
Healthcare workers were put under enormous pressure by the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide, including in New Zealand - and the demand for health services remains high.
He’d planned to hold on until the winter of 2022, but instead quit medicine in February 2021, ending a career that included stints as a city and rural GP, running his own urgent care clinic for three years and, finally, working as an urgent care physician at private A&E Shore Care in Northcross, Auckland.
“[When] Covid hit, the winter of 2020 was just terrible because GPs wouldn’t see anyone with Covid, there was no vaccine and [large numbers] were dying [overseas].”
He didn’t feel supported to do the job, and patients were complaining more, so when the various certificates he needed to practise came up for renewal - at an annual cost of about $6000 - Kai Fong decided to “punch out early”.
“At the end I just felt they didn’t deserve my work anymore ... I was completely burnt to a crisp.”
When he quit medicine, former doctor Jeff Kai Fong considered becoming a postman but opted instead to drive trucks. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Kai Fong had taken a few breaks from medicine over his career, including a six-month stint driving trucks just after finishing his medical training, and a year working as a technician for BMW after going to automotive school. He also found time to get his private helicopter pilot’s licence.
Among the new jobs he considered was becoming a postie.
“I really love riding my motorcycle so I thought maybe I could deliver mail on one of those little scooters, because I’ll be riding every day. But then I watched them and they don’t really ride, they just putt around on the footpath.”
A “truck driving adventure” in North America also appealed, but he didn’t know how to drive trucks using the Roadranger gearbox, prevalent in American trucks and designed to give drivers more control with heavy loads or challenging terrain.
“If you bugger up the gearbox, it’s 20 grand to fix it. So they won’t give you a job on one of these trucks unless you’ve had two years of experience.”
The solution would come in his Shore Care consultation room, when GilesCivil owner Joe Coombe arrived as a patient with an infected leg.
Kai Fong told Coombe of his plans to take up truck driving in North America, and when Coombe returned for more treatment a couple of months later, Kai Fong had more news - the next day would be his last in medicine.
“He said, ‘Are you still going to go and drive trucks in Canada? Because you need to learn Roadranger gearboxes and I’ve got one of those trucks’. I said, ‘So, you’d give me a job?’ and he said, ‘Yes’.”
Former emergency doctor Jeff Kai Fong says he'll never go back to medicine. He now works as a truck driver for GilesCivil. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Three years on, plans to drive in North America are in the rear view mirror along with Kai Fong’s medical career.
“The best word to describe [my job] is fun. Driving a big truck is just fun.”
At GilesCivil he gets a good hourly rate - albeit a quarter of what he used to earn - for working on average 45 hours a week, is given a paid day off for his birthday, no longer works through Christmas, weekends or evenings and gets a $100 grocery voucher and lunch out at Christmas.
He also joins workmates on a fully-funded annual fishing trip, and has free medical insurance.
“This is the first time in 30 years I’ve had medical insurance, and it’s as a truck driver. They don’t give you medical insurance when you’re a doctor.”
Small house sites, narrow driveways, fences and hedges kept things challenging, but not stressful, Kai Fong told the Herald.
After years of feeling unappreciated, he was getting used to a boss who’ll “actually thank me”, for bringing a load of gravel to the site.
“It’s like light and dark [compared to medicine]. I’ve been in a really good place since I started. I couldn’t go back to medicine, wild horses couldn’t drag me back.”
Former medical doctor Jeff Kai Fong says he is happier in his work with his new career as a truck driver. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Despite the perks, he still plans to quit work at 65 - there’s too much else he wants to do, from cartooning to competitive field archery, Kai Fong said.
“I’ve started writing politically incorrect T-shirts and I really enjoy that, and I created a little cartoon character - I want to do a bit of cartooning because I’ve always liked it.
“I’d also really like to do some flax weaving.”
Until then he lives in a “trailer on wheels” at his daughter’s home, and has already bought his retirement home, a 2014 Toyota Hiace van.
“I’m going to live on the beach, and just be absolutely free.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
