Until November

GPs not available until October 26 and 28. Another advised it did not have a free appointment in the next two to three weeks.

School holidays have just begun, so some doctors may be taking annual leave, or off-sick, limiting available appointments. Clinics also have triage systems to see urgent patients over nonurgent appointments, so this will vary.

Wellington GP and president of the Royal College of General Practitioners Dr Samantha Murton said there is ‘‘quite a significant shortage’’ of doctors in many parts of Aotearoa, at a time when clinics are trying to catch up on care delayed by winter illnesses and Covid-19.

Day-to-day work – diabetes reviews, cervical smears, blood pressure monitoring and cardiovascular risk assessments – carried on at ‘‘probably the minimum we could do without making people unsafe’’ during the outbreak, but had increased back to ‘‘what we were doing normally’’.

Murton said some practices were starting to see gaps in their books coming out of winter, and were able to book patients a couple of days out, as opposed to a few weeks – but this varied.

Through winter, a two to threeweek wait had been the norm across most practices: ‘‘That’s such a stress on the people waiting, and getting sicker.’’

More GPs retired in the 2021/22 year than in recent years, which Murton said was also contributing to practices being stretched. In 10 years, at the current rate, New Zealand will be short 300.

‘‘That’s such a stress on the people waiting, and getting sicker.’’

Samantha Murton Wellington GP