General practitioners are coming out of retirement or putting it off to support their rural communities.<\/p>\n
One doctor has taken to seeing patients in a caravan fitted out as a mobile clinic in his spare time.<\/p>\n
“I think people like myself deserve to have a rest,” said Dr Warren Nicholls, 80, after 50 years in general practice, .<\/p>\n
He wasn’t the only doctor putting off retirement: Medical Council of New Zealand data showed the share of GPs working past 65 hadw almost doubled in a decade.<\/p>\n
Health New Zealand said GPs aged over 65 and younger GPs between 30-50 had increased in recent years. The workforce gap had arisen over the course of many years and could not be addressed all at once.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Nicholls had volunteered at the Glob van for four years, touring rural areas between New Plymouth and Foxton at market days, dog shows and rural festivals.<\/p>\n
“I love my job, I love looking after people,” Dr Nicholls explained. “We have proved beyond all doubt that there’s a huge need out there, especially for people in the rural communities, which are socially and geographically isolated.”<\/p>\n
The van was originally set up by Agri-HQ, a media company based in Feilding, and gifted to the Lions Club.<\/p>\n
The van was affectionately named ‘Glob’ after Agri-HQ’s parent company, Global HQ.<\/p>\n
He said it had screened 7300 people in the past four years, averaging 10 patients an hour. Screening revealed more than a quarter of participants had undetected health problems.<\/p>\n
Nicholls said this was partly due to difficulty accessing and paying for primary care in rural areas, but mostly, it was because the most common conditions they found – such as high blood pressure – were asymptomatic.<\/p>\n
The van was limited in the services it could offer – it didn’t provide treatment and people had to be turned away, when capacity was exceeded.<\/p>\n
Staff at the van checked medical history, filled out mental health questionnaires, and ran exams and blood tests.<\/p>\n
“The feedback, which we ask for, is 100 percent positive,” he said. “They absolutely love it and are extremely grateful.”<\/p>\n
For similar reasons, Dr Clare Ward, 77, unretired in 2022.<\/p>\n
She said the main driver was the idea her patients might not have a doctor or would have a rotation of locum doctors without her.<\/p>\n
“It seems like the antithesis of good patient care, if you like.”<\/p>\n
Ward explained good care went beyond “fixing up a broken wrist or a sore toe” – it involved building trust and relationships to spot issues.<\/p>\n
Being a doctor in a rural community in Hokianga had brought her great joy, challenging her to be resourceful, she said.<\/p>\n
“I think people only see the drudgery of it, but really drudgery is way outweighed by the satisfaction.”<\/p>\n
She agreed she couldn’t keep working forever.<\/p>\n
Ward said more doctors needed to work rurally or “what we’ve always regarded as good patient care is not going to exist anymore”.<\/p>\n
Royal New Zealand College of GPs president Dr Luke Bradford had noticed an “eroding of general practice as an attractive career choice to young doctors” over the years.<\/p>\n
He said younger doctors chose to work in specialty medicine or hospitals, where pay and work conditions were often more desirable.<\/p>\n
“A huge amount of what general practice does goes unrecognised. Our own research shows over 40 percent is often unpaid.”<\/p>\n
A Health NZ spokesperson said newly qualified doctors chose general practice more often than any other specialty.<\/p>\n
“However, the numbers are not increasing fast enough to meet demand from an ageing and growing population.”<\/p>\n
He said there was a range of initiatives to attract and retain GPs, including increased funding for general practices and training.<\/p>\n
He said primary care faced challenges, especially in rural areas.<\/p>\n
“From 1 July, 2026, the capitation formula has also been updated so, for the first time, funding more closely aligns with the different needs of enrolled populations, including… those living in rural communities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"General practitioners are coming out of retirement or putting it off to support their rural communities. One doctor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-648065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}