Auckland Uni lashes Waikato med school bid
A renewed drive to create the country’s third med school has drawn a rebuke from Auckland University’s top brass.
National has pushed talk of a possible Waikato med school back onto the agenda after it floated the idea of contestable process for a graduate-entry med school.
A shortage of rural health professionals has hit many communities hard and looms as a major election issue in Waikato.
The New Zealand Medical Association last week labelled the shortage of GPs in Northland as unacceptable.
A focus of the proposed Waikato med school – a joint bid by Waikato University and the Waikato DHB – is to retain doctors in rural areas.
But, in a statement, Auckland University vice-chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon said it was a ‘‘nonsense’’ to suggest creating a third medical school would fix the nationwide shortage of rural and regional doctors.
Establishing a fully fledged med school would also cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
‘‘This means we would have to pour money into such a school when the existing medical schools are already set up to do the job really well and, given the constraints on health and education budgets, would risk an underfunded second-rate operation delivering doctors into New Zealand’s smallest towns,’’ McCutcheon said.
‘‘This would not be in the national interest.’’
McCutcheon did not respond to a request for an interview.
Auckland University has been openly critical of the Waikato med school bid, previously dubbing it ‘‘illconsidered and expensive folly’’.
Following the launch of the Waikato bid in October 2016, Auckland and Otago med schools responded with plans to create a national school of rural health.
In 2017, the Waikato Times filed an Official Information Act request with Auckland University, asking for emails and documents relating to the proposed Waikato med school.
The university charged Stuff more than $530 for 53 emails but later partially refunded the money after the Ombudsman ruled the charge was unreasonable.
Waikato University Professor of Population Health Ross Lawrenson said New Zealand is increasing the number of doctors it employs by 4 per cent a year but the number of medical students being trained hasn’t increased for several years.
New Zealand has become heavily reliant on overseas-trained doctors to fill shortages, especially in rural areas.
‘‘I don’t think Stuart [McCutcheon] can argue my comment that there is an overall shortage [of doctors] and, secondly, there is a maldistribution, is not true,’’ Lawrenson said.
McCutcheon’s suggestion the Waikato proposal risks creating a ‘‘second-rate’’ med school is an attempt to scare the public, Lawrenson said.
The Waikato bid draws inspiration from overseas models, such as the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which opened in 2005.
Despite opposition from Ontario’s established med schools, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine has proven successful in training and placing highly trained doctors in rural communities.
The Waikato bid, like the Northern Ontario med school, proposes to put graduate-entry students through four years of training, including one year based in a community setting.
‘‘I have to say the thing that got me with [McCutcheon’s] comment was about a second-rate medical programme.
‘‘That is the sort of language that they use to scare the public into saying we won’t have properly trained doctors,’’ Lawrenson said.
McCutcheon said Auckland University is committed to working with the Government to establish a multi-institutional school in and for rural New Zealand.
He also noted Lawrenson previously worked at Auckland University for 11 years and was part of a group that approved the plan to create the university’s regional and rural training programmes in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and Waikato.
Lawrenson said during his time at Auckland University he put up a proposal for a graduate-entry medical programme based in Waikato but it was turned down.
‘‘I was part of the University of Auckland and advocated for rural development there but certainly they didn’t do as much as I hoped,’’ he said.
‘‘That’s why I thought the opportunity to go to Waikato was at least moving that forward.’’