Connecting through health

Mid-lockdown late last year, a young multi-lingual doctor working in rural south Auckland snapped up the chance to take over an east Auckland practice from two retiring GPS.

Luke Wee, with his wife and one-year-old baby in tow, started running Meadowbank Medical Centre in November.

‘‘It did seem a bit crazy at the time,’’ Wee said.

‘‘A lot of people were trying to get out of working in the middle of the pandemic. A lot of people were burnt out and facing a lot of different stresses for their personal health.

‘‘I saw it as both a crisis and an opportunity.’’

Almost immediately, the practice opened up to walk-ins for testing, extending the invitation to non-enrolled patients, and in mid-january this year, started vaccinating.

More recently, the centre has also joined a small number of sites across the city in offering the Novavax vaccine.

‘‘We have found it rewarding to offer an alternative,’’ Wee said.

‘‘I think there’s a sense of relief that there’s an alternative for those who are not keen on the Pfizer vaccine and there’s also a degree of openness to the vaccine that we haven’t seen previously.

‘‘People who had been waiting, people who had been previously sceptical, are now more open to the vaccine.’’

Wee speaks English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, French

‘‘I think as modern day clinicians, we really have to think hard about what’s our role in society. And I think one of our roles is a connector of people. ’’ Luke Wee

and Te reo Māori with varying fluency. Some of his staff are also bilingual. Serving his multicultural community is especially important to him.

‘‘I’m Asian by origin but it doesn’t limit me to my own community. I think as modern day clinicians, we really have to think hard about what’s our role in society. And I think one of our roles is a connector of people.

‘‘And we are quite privileged to cut across all sectors of society. The ability to communicate and speak the language of the people we are trying to serve makes our work more rewarding.’’

Wee says a recent example of this springs to mindan Algerian family came in who only spoke Arabic and French, and were all unwell with Covid-19.

‘‘They couldn’t find any health services that were able to communicate well with them.

‘‘I was privileged to be able to speak to them and help.’’

Wee said that lately, their focus has been on delivering booster doses and flu vaccinations.

‘‘We have been really busy. And also busy catching up with a backlog of people needing help, a lot of patients who have put off their health checks because of Covid-19.

‘‘We are also actively recruiting for new clinicians, trying to train new doctors, getting medical students in next month, as well as looking at overseas recruitment.’’