Medical professionals urge the Government to facilitate the training of more GPs

Health Minister Dr David Clark this morning announced he had scrapped plans for a School of Rural Medicine. Photo / Marty Melvi

Medical professionals are disappointed by the Government scrapping plans for a third New Zealand medical school and are calling on the Health Minister to ensure more GPs are trained.

This morning, Health Minister David Clark revealed the Government would not be going ahead with plans to establish a School of Rural Medicine.

The previous Government had promised to create the school in a bid to get more doctors into rural New Zealand.

But Clark said no money had been allocated for the school, which would have cost up to a quarter of a billion dollars to set up and operate.

National's Health spokesman Michael Woodhouse said Clark's decision is "further proof that the Minister – and his Government – are marginalising rural New Zealanders".

Waikato DHB and the University of Waikato jointly put a business case to the Government about establishing a third medical school in the Waikato.

Ross Lawrenson, a health professor at Waikato University and also a member of the Waikato DHB, is disappointed in the Government's decision.

"From the Waikato Medical school perspective, our proposal was aimed at the more general problems of the shortages right across the sector, particularly in provincial areas.

"While we're disappointed that the rural focus has not been there, we're looking forward to talking to the Government about the wider implications of the Waikato Medical school proposal."

One of the issues Lawrenson wants to address is the fact that New Zealand is simply not training enough medical professionals.

He said within the Waikato region, 71 per cent of the specialists in the past three years, who have been given vocational registration, have been international medical graduates.

Some 95 per cent of Waikato psychiatrists are international medical graduates.

"We are entirely dependent on international medical graduates because New Zealand is not training enough, particularly in the high needs specialities."

The medical school proposal was aimed at addressing this issue, he said.

Rural General Practice Network chief executive Dalton Kelly said rural communities were not just looking for more doctors – "we're looking for doctors, nurses, midwives, physios – we need the whole complete workforce".

"If those people are trained in rural communities, overseas evidence shows that people stay there and enjoy working in that community."

Last year, before the election, Labour promised to increase the number of vocational training places for GPs to 300 a year.

Lawrenson said at the moment, that number was roughly 190 and of that, 40 per cent were international medical graduates.

Otago and Auckland universities produced 500 new medical graduates a year and just 20 per cent of those go into general practice, he said.

"Either half of the medical school output has to suddenly switch from being hospital specialists to general practice, or [the Government] has to think of another way of providing another pipeline into general practice."

But Clark said the Government had a plan to get more GPs into the regions.
"I've asked the Ministry of Health to work on addressing the issues of access to health services in rural areas and increasing the availability of a whole range of health practitioners in rural areas."

He said the Government would also put greater investment into professional development for rural primary health care nurses and midwives and would extend rural inter-professional education programmes.

He said these are things the Government could do in the short term, while the Ministry of Health looked at "longer-term solutions" for rural communities.

But Woodhouse said the Government needs to be doing more.

"This is a Government which has already downgraded the Lumsden Maternity Clinic, cut back vital rescue helicopter services, and rejected a request for core funding from Rural Health Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand."

"The previous National Government's commitment last year to establish a new School of Rural Medicine was strongly welcomed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners as a 'positive step towards solving the critical shortage in the rural medical workforce."