Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

I note the average time to wait to get in to see your GP is three weeks. That’s the average. For many it’s longer than that. And for some rural areas in this country, you’d be hard pressed to see a GP at all, far less one close to you. You may have to drive for miles to get to even get to one. So we know it’s a problem, but how to fix it? President of the Royal NZ College of GP’s, Samantha Murton, wrote a piece for the Herald yesterday saying how it’s not an easy fix. “We can’t magic away the chronic GP shortage”, she said. She puts it down to the low number of trained GP’s. She says that “our Med student numbers are lower than in many other first-world countries”, and that “they have little opportunity to train outside of hospitals, and early career doctors are not encouraged to work in general practice.” And I know that to be true, we have a daughter at Med school currently and she would concur that not a lot of her peers are there to wind up in a GP’s office. Advocates for the work of GP’s will tell you it