KEY POINTS:
New Zealand needs to improve the salaries and conditions it offers doctors, lure back ex-pats , and urgently train more medical students if it is going to pull back from the brink of a major shortage of health workers.
They are among findings of a World Health Organisation report which concludes that our health system faces "serious challenges" with demand from health professions set to outstrip supply by 2011.
The report, titled Can New Zealand Compete?, found that over-dependence on foreign doctors and nurses had made the health system vulnerable, and that the Government needed to invest urgently in training more doctors.
New Zealand has the highest proportion of migrant doctors among all OECD countries (52 per cent). Just 33 per cent of international medical graduates remain after registration.
New Zealand-trained health workers are also leaving in droves. Currently about 7500 Kiwi nurses are working in other OECD countries - about the same number as that of foreign nurses working in New Zealand.
The number of New Zealand doctors working overseas is about half the number of foreign doctors working in hospitals here.
At the same time, the number of medical graduates lags behind the OECD average: 7.9 per 100,000, as opposed to 9.4.
As well as improving salaries and working conditions and luring back ex-pats, it was vital to boost medical school numbers, the report said.
"But taking into account the length of training, it might require immediate action."
Resident Doctors' Association national secretary Deborah Powell told the Dominion Post the junior doctors' continuing industrial dispute was a symptom of chronic workforce shortages.
"As well as training our own, we have to hang on to them. With 30 graduates leaving last year before even starting work as a doctor, we await this year's uptake with some concern."
National Party leader John Key suggests "bonding" medical graduates to remain for a set period as part of their student loan deals.
Medical Association chairman Peter Foley said debt relief could be a powerful tool in retaining junior doctors, but any system should be "entirely voluntary".
Medical Students Association president Anna Dare said debt relief should be offered only after graduation.
- NZPA
