Over the past 20years, there has been a worldwide effort to improve working conditions and hours of junior doctors. The issues are, however, extremely complex as changing hours of work have a direct impact on aspects such as continuity of patient care, apprentice models of training, and length of training. Senior doctors work closely with junior doctors providing supervision, teaching, and sharing of clinical care. In this study, we conducted a small sample survey to determine if there were significant differences of opinion between senior and junior doctors regarding optimum working conditions while still providing excellent patient care and teaching opportunities.

There is a worldwide shortage of rural physicians, and this article examines international medical school undergraduate programmes to extract common features associated with success in recruiting and retaining rural physicians. These features include admission of rural students, curricular focus on primary care/family medicine, community-based teaching, and community/rural mentorship. These strategies may be applied to the New Zealand setting in an attempt to increase the rural physician workforce and improve the quality of rural healthcare.

Newly graduated doctors are expected to manage medical emergencies, but current training may be deficient in ensuring they can do this effectively. Computerised full-body patient simulators can realistically portray a large number of clinical events, and students can put theory into practice in a safe environment with no risk to patients. This paper looks at the current skill level in medical students, and evaluates a simulator workshop designed to improve their management of medical emergencies.

The shortage of psychiatrists in New Zealand and their possible geographic maldistribution has attracted much media attention over the past few years. This study surveyed managers of public mental health services to determine if they have experienced difficulties securing or retaining psychiatrists over the past 5 years, what factors they believe attracted psychiatrists to work in their service, and the strategies they have used in attempts to overcome any psychiatrist shortages. Every mental health service that responded had experienced problems with adequacy of their psychiatrist staffing. The strategies found to universally alleviate psychiatrist shortages were finding locums to cover leave for staff psychiatrists and assisting newly appointed psychiatrists with relocation . Managers opinions on staffing issues can differ to that of psychiatrists, and this is the first contemporary study attempting to systematically study this area.

Psychological morbidity among a sample of Auckland District Health Board hospital doctors was similar to that of General Practitioners in New Zealand (NZ), Australia, and the United Kingdom, and significantly higher than the general NZ population. Stressful events, decreased work productivity, and interference with family life were associated with psychological distress. Doctors’ appraisals of stressful situations may influence the impact of the situations on their mental health.

The growing international literature signifies great variation in the impact of stress, job satisfaction, psychological symptoms, and morale on health professionals around the world. This paper explores such differences by comparing the experiences of doctors working in the United Kingdom with those in New Zealand, and produces some interesting results.