NZMSA Media Statement: Medical Workforce Retention Projections

The Aotearoa medical workforce, like much of the world,
is facing a shortage of medical healthcare staff. Any
attempt to increase our domestically produced medical
workforce requires us to retain the doctors our universities
produce. Recent reports indicate that Aotearoa is struggling
to maintain its young doctors and funnel them into domestic
specialist training programs. [1]

NZMSA runs a yearly
survey of medical students across Aotearoa looking into
multiple aspects of medical education and workforce. Our
most recent survey in 2023 drew responses from over 250
medical students throughout the country and displayed an
alarming trend. We saw increasing numbers of students
indicating that they had no interest in staying in Aotearoa
beyond 5 years. 47% of respondents indicated that they
intended to leave Aotearoa after 1-5 years of working, and
only 31% indicated they had no intention of leaving the
country.

Targeted surveying of clinical students on a
range of issues shows common threads around concerns about
financial viability when considering Aotearoa as a future.
Students report a desire to stay in Aotearoa but many appear
disappointed in the differences in pay and workload they see
in competing systems. Others cite the stress of medical
school as a contributing factor. One recently graduated
doctor reported to NZMSA that as a Trainee Intern they were
‘struggling to survive’ and that this feeling followed
them into the workplace where their existing burnout was
compounded by the lack of ‘a manageable workload’. They
state that they and their peers ‘are in survival mode and
constantly joke about giving up. This is not a healthy
attitude to have towards your career especially when you
have invested so much time and effort to get
here.’

NZMSA Vice President Advocacy, Divyashri
Thakkar, who is in charge of running this year’s National
Survey said that ‘These results should cause deep concern
for the future of our health workforce in Aotearoa. It is
not just financial strain that is causing young doctors to
leave, but also the training conditions and lack of support
our medical students face. Comprehensive efforts should be
taken to retain domestically trained doctors and to foster a
sustainable medical workforce in Aotearoa.’

NZMSA
President, Indira Fernando added that ‘ Medical Students
are often presented as the future of our health workforce
and the solution to our broken system, however we do little
to support them through the process, nor to encourage them
to stay here once they graduate.’

‘We are people
with families to feed, huge loans to pay off, and lives we
want to live to the fullest. We are excited to serve our
communities but cannot be asked to do so at the cost of
ourselves.’

1.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/488666/junior-doctors-increasingly-leaving-before-training-as-specialists-new-estimate-suggests

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