Bush Medical Centre GP Sam Wilson retires

Tararua District Mayor Tracey Collis presenting Dr Sam Wilson and his wife Oi with a gift at a farewell evening on Thursday.

After a lifetime serving as a doctor, Sam Wilson has retired at the Bush Medical Centre (Tararua Health Group) having spent 34 years as a general practitioner in southern Tararua.

His interest in medicine was perhaps sparked by a sixth-form biology lesson where Sam was dissecting a rat. “I was curious what humans would look like on the inside,” said Dr Wilson.

“I decided to pursue medical studies and be a doctor at Leeds University, in the north of England. After five years of study, I graduated and worked as a junior doctor at the hospital in Huddersfield, moving on to work at Wakefield Hospital, where I trained to be a general practitioner,” he said.

Qualifying in 1976, Dr Wilson received his “ticket for general practice” in 1981, subsequently working in Coventry for three years as a GP.

Then it was time for an overseas experience in the tropics in Brunei for three years, as a government medical officer. At the completion of the term, Dr Wilson travelled to New Zealand for a holiday and returned to England to work as a locum.

He came back to New Zealand in 1988 to look at some practices and was pursued and persuaded (by Joyce McIntyre) to take over from Dr Des Quick in Woodville, who retired at the end of 1988.

Doctor Wilson ran the practice for 10 years, then spent two years as a locum around the North Island. Then Dr Devonald, at the Bush Medical Centre, asked Dr Wilson to buy him out.

During his time in Woodville, Dr Wilson started a course at Otago University — GP academic work — gaining a postgraduate diploma. He then worked for the Medical Council as a subcontractor, reviewing doctors around the country from Invercargill to Auckland.

He worked for the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners as a teacher of registrars and an examiner for examinations towards a fellowship. Since 2008, three fifth-year students from Otago University come to Dannevirke each year, where they learn and work with patients.

“It wasn’t too difficult to find other doctors to work with in 2000, starting with doctors: Alison Miller, Naeem Chaudry, Delamy Keall, and Paul Jip. In 2009, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the established GPs in the Tararua area were not getting any younger, so they amalgamated, thinking it would be a good way for succession planning.

Dr Sam Wilson with a caricature presented to him by friends in Woodville.

“Now, there is a huge shortage of doctors in New Zealand.” He said in his view general practice was “shafted” in the 1990s by then Finance Minister Ruth Richardson in her “Mother of all Budgets” under Jim Bolger’s government.

“She did not fund training for general practice. The result is the gap in senior doctors now. There’s a big shortage of well-qualified GPs. Andrew Little, the recent Minister of Health, said many times, how much more money the Government has put into the health system, but it has not translated into GPs though.

“We used to have three GPs every day in this area [southern Tararua] in the 1990s, it went up to four, and that has dropped now, we are lucky if we have two GPs, we are down to one for the southern Tararua presently, despite actively recruiting for overseas doctors.

“On April 1, 2009, we became Tararua Health Group, with all the doctors except Michael Short, who is the longest-serving GP in the Tararua district.

“Corporatising practices has become necessary because of the need to computerise, the need to provide more information to the Ministry of Health — a major funder — which requires a huge amount of information. For that we require managerial and computer skills,” said Dr Wilson.

Events that have been etched in his memory over the years include a time when he was working in A&E at Wakefield in England when the hospital was asked to assist with casualties from a bus full of police that had crashed.

Another event was the Woodville Fire Brigade crash on the Hall Block in the Manawatu Gorge in 1993, where fireman John Agnew died.

Dr Wilson will continue living in Woodville with his wife Oi and will be spending time enjoying his hobby of chainsawing firewood on his lifestyle block.