Rekindling the fight for Waikato’s med school proposal

Saturday, 17 August 2024

A med school in Waikato would ease the shortage of GPs in New Zealand.

OPINION: In 2017 Auckland and Otago tried to extinguish Waikato’s bid to establish the country’s sorely needed third medical school. Seven years on and Waikato’s bid is still on the table and stronger than ever.

The plan is to provide specialist GP training to address the dire shortage of doctors.

A great idea but sadly not everyone is a fan.

Those with vested interests - namely Otago and Auckland medical schools - are seeking to derail the bid. Currently, Auckland and Otago enjoy a cozy duopoly in GP training and the associated government funding.

A med school in Waikato is sorely needed.

The big boys' noses are way out of joint about Waikato's inspired proposal and they’ve been that way since 2017. In fact the two established med schools tried to poison the ears of government ministers in a covert campaign three months before the proposal was revealed to the public all those years ago.

If that doesn't get your blood up, think of it this way. The two institutions responsible for creating the dire GP shortage in the first place, have done nothing to address the problem since time immemorial.

But they did try to torpedo our bid before it was even floated.

The problem with the way medical students are currently trained is that most students opt to specialise in highly lucrative areas of medicine and eschew the role of humble General Practitioner. That's why Waikato's bid - ably led by Waikato University Vice Chancellor Neil Quigley - is timely and sorely needed.

Under the current system the bar is set artificially high. So if a student gets an A minus in health science, for example, they are turned away. The student's hopes of being a family doctor are dashed and we all lose out in the long run. It's an almost immoral waste of medical potential. The current training model, that's the Auckland and Otago method, leaves us short of an estimated1700 doctors every year. That's not okay.

In 2017 Waikato dared to devise a homespun solution to solve a national crisis, so Auckland and Otago cobbled together their own proposal to address the GP issue but only after denying that any such crisis existed. Go figure. So what this boils down to is a couple of bully boy institutions trying to stymie our bid for something desperately needed.

We shouldn't stand for it.

Today the Waikato Times reignites our Fighting for our Med School campaign which we started in 2017. The aim is to raise awareness about Waikato’s proposal which Cabinet is due to make decisions about by the end of September. We need your help. We ask you, once again, to write to us at editor@waikatotimes.co.nz supporting the proposal and we will publish your letters as a gauge of public support.

Please also write to your local MP and tell them what you think. If you do this then politicians will get the message that Waikato can solve the national GP shortage crisis and cut the purse strings to make Waikato Medical School happen.

Jonathan MacKenzie. Editor, Waikato Times