The Northern Consortium has state funding and a large part of its business is to attract locums to work in this beautiful part of the world. This means there are major incentives working through the Consortium, which include:

• Arranging for placement in a practice

• Finding accommodation

• Guaranteed session payments

• Arrangement for the use of a vehicle

• Meet and greet at Auckland airport

• Half of the airfare is refunded if you stay for 6 months or more.

We also enjoyed a tour of Auckland and lunch on the first day, but I’m not sure if this is standard!

In addition the Consortium pays for and arranges New Zealand Medical Council registration and will provide all the necessary papers required to apply for a New Zealand Work Visa. If you are a member of the MPS then your membership will cover your work in NZ, if not your MPS subs will be refunded.

So, what’s general practice like in NZ? The truthful answer probably is that it’s not too much different from GP land back in the UK. The bread and butter work of snotty-nosed kids, worried mums and vague symptoms with complex psychological overlay feel very familiar. You will be exposed to a fair amount of casualty work that involves sprains and lacerations that require suturing as in many practices there is a journey of over an hour to AED and then waiting times are very long. Some practices are equipped with X-Ray machines and manage simple fractures themselves and some are involved in running community hospitals. GP obstetrics is now a rarity in NZ and independent midwives have taken over not only intra-partum but also antenatal care. You would never be expected to provide intra-partum care.

Paramedics are not yet common in rural parts of New Zealand. Trained volunteers known as first responders often deal with the equivalent of 999 calls and in some practices the doctors act as back up and respond to ambulance calls via a pager (known as a PRIME call). If you are suitably trained and keen to do this BASICS type of work there is plenty of opportunity to practice your skills, if not then placements can be found were you will be covered by a colleague for PRIME calls or where the practice do not do this as part of their work.

Most practices will still work an old-fashioned On Call rota. My rota involves 1 overnight weekday shift per week and one weekend 24-hour shift every three weeks. All out of hours shifts are compensated for by time off, a night on call gets you a paid half-day and a weekend shift a whole day. Being able to charge $55 for being dragged out of bed at night does make me feel a little better about having to do it and it does deter many calls. So far I have only had to get up once in three months and I feel the time off has more than compensated for it. New Zealand GPs hardly ever do house calls, and this means most work is surgery based and I have found there seems to be more time in the day because of this, but I guess this will depend on the working patterns you are used to. There has been no pressure at all to see heaps of patients and I even had to persuade my practice manager that I could cope with 15-minute appointments!

The cultural melting pot that is New Zealand gives exposure to many different health-belief systems. In particular, Northland has a large proportion of the population who claim Maori descent and a basic understanding of the traditional Maori views of health and the history of European settlement in NZ is very helpful. There are long books available on this topic but the essentials are summarized in The Rough Guide and Insight Guide which are well worth getting anyway as we have found them invaluable for planning our time off.

Enough about work. You probably have heard NZ described in superlative terms by those who have visited and settled here. Well it’s all true and more. The Northland beaches must be amongst the best in the world there are only 4 million Kiwis in the entire country to compete for space on them and on the roads. The Aucklanders’ constantly moan about traffic congestion but in truth anyone from the UK will find NZ feels distinctly uncluttered. The cafes serve wonderful coffee and cakes designed to cause coronaries just by looking at them. Our boys have attended a local primary school and have been very well accepted by their peers. They are playing sport like they never did before and are relishing the novelty of Christmas barbecues on the beach. The local cricket team have even invited me to play for them despite the fact I haven’t touched a bat for 25 years. The great thing is, it just doesn’t matter, and everyone can have a go. It’s just as well the cricket is really only an excuse for the post match beer drinking.

So, feel tempted? If you want to contact me about anything to do with working as a Locum in NZ, Adrienne Harris from NRGPC (www.ruraldocs.co.nz) will be able to give you my e-mail address.

Some tips.

1. Visas. If you are bringing a partner or family over to New Zealand make sure that you apply for a Visitor’s Visa for your partner and Student Visas for your kids if you want them to attend a local school. These will allow you multiple entries to the country in case you want to take the opportunity to see Oz or visit one of the Pacific Islands that are only a short flight from Auckland. NZ immigration in London is currently taking up to 10 weeks to process visitor’s visas so allow lots of time.
2. Schools. We have found the local primary school in Wellsford very helpful and are more than impressed with the education. There is more emphasis on sport than in the UK. Student Visas are a must to avoid heaps of hassles.

Adrian Dawson
Locum at Coast to Coast, Wellsford
C/- Northern Rural General Practice Consortium, Box 57,Kerikeri, New Zealand