Hospitals haemorrhaging doctors

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Hospital managers are worried that New Zealand will not have enough junior doctors on the wards next winter.

About 350 went to Australia last year in pursuit of better working conditions and higher incomes to pay off student loans that now average $70,000 for new medical graduates.

Around a tenth of New Zealand's 1800 junior-doctor positions are vacant and applications for next year are well down on those for this year.

A quarter of Auckland Medical School students in a survey expect to practise medicine mostly or exclusively overseas.

The poll, conducted by the school to help health authorities with workforce issues, compounds public hospital managers' fears of a staffing crisis next winter. Hospitals already have to deal with a shortage of nurses and, in some areas, senior physicians.

The Resident Doctors Association, which is seeking a 20 per cent pay rise for junior doctors, said that last year 350 of them went to Australia and a third of 300 graduating doctors went overseas.

The Auckland survey in March of 440 medical students, about half of the total, found that of those born in New Zealand, 22 per cent expected to practise mainly overseas, and 3 per cent expected to practise only overseas.

Half of all the respondents estimated that at graduation they would owe $60,000 or more.

Fees for the school's six-year medical degree top $50,000.

Health Minister Annette King suggested that the Government's $11.8 million retraining scheme to enable many foreign doctors already resident here to practise medicine would help to offset the junior-doctor shortage. The package includes a one-semester refresher course and a six-month intern period in hospitals, and about 300 doctors will be eligible.

However, association general secretary Deborah Sidebotham said the money would be better spent on junior doctors, to encourage them to stay.

Some hospital managers echo that view and are concerned that they will need extra staff to supervise foreign-trained doctors, particularly since English is a second language for many.

A Waikato Hospital doctor added that the Government move would be hard to swallow for overseas doctors who went to the trouble of passing the Medical Council exam without this help.

Paediatrics registrar Jamie Speeden said some doctors who had not practised for five to 10 years would have trouble catching up with medical advances with a one-semester course.

But Medical Council deputy president Ian St George welcomed the Government's announcement. "The package gives these doctors a fair go, at the same time enforcing a minimum standard so that the public is protected."