A lifetime of caring
In New Zealand almost 96 percent of people receive quality medical care in the community by seeing their GP. General practice is the medical speciality that treats patients with the widest variety of conditions, with the greatest range of severity, and from the cradle to the grave. Our GPs work from central-city locations through to the most remote rural hospital.
In the Ministry of Health’s 2018/19 New Zealand Health Survey update, 91 percent of patients agreed that their GP was good or very good at explaining health conditions and treatments. GPs are trained by The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (the College) to do that; they’re specialists and working with uncertainty is their game, whether that’s assessing a condition in a 15-minute appointment or helping a patient maintain or improve their health over a lifetime.
Today we’re celebrating 191 new GP Fellows who’ve graduated their specialist training, including several who are now qualified as rural hospital doctors. But we need more. Like everyone, GPs are getting older (27 percent plan to retire in the next three years) and we need new doctors to train so we can ensure all New Zealanders, regardless of where they live, have equitable access to good quality healthcare delivered in their community.
People like Dr Elodie Mazoyer, a French-trained doctor who is now a Kiwi GP working in Christchurch. She topped her GP written and clinical exams, using her second language of English, and has been awarded the College’s Humphrey Rainey Prize for Excellence. People like Dr Samantha Murton, president of the College, who has led a low-cost inner-city Wellington practice for the past 20 years staffed mostly by female GPs. She’s also a skilled artist, often using drawing in her explanations to patients.
“I recently read that in hospital medicine doctors get just a snapshot of people’s lives, but in general practice we get to see the whole video, which sums up perfectly the care I give my patients, often across the course of much of their lives,” she says. GPs work hard and it can be a challenging, gut-wrenching, and puzzling job but one that can bring huge benefit for doctors and patients alike.
The College’s 2016 workforce survey showed that 46 percent of GPs worked fewer than 36 hours a week because, while most GPs thrive on the challenge, they also need to care for themselves. Many balance their work commitments alongside family life, completing research, and training the next generation of GPs.
Dr Bryan Betty is the medical director of the College of GPs, and during the COVID-19 response has become the GP face in the media. His work at the College complements his practice as a frontline GP. His career has seen him working in rural and urban areas including 14 years in a highdeprivation area of Porirua and a stint in rural South Australia.
The College is the membership organisation for 5,500 GPs advocating for equity, access, and sustainable health care and believes fundamentally that regardless of who or where they are, every New Zealander should have access to their own GP. Where do people spend most of their health care time? In the community with ‘their’ doctor. That’s why GPs are such a critical part of our country.