Patients bring their own chairs to queue outside practice amid Kiwi GP crisis
But paying GP registrars the same as hospital registrars seems to have attracted more doctors to train as GPs.
Pictures of patients queuing outside a GP practice from 6am in bleak New Zealand weather has prompted front-page headlines declaring the “death of the family doctor”.
The New Zealand Herald reported that patients were bringing their own chairs to camp for hours outside a GP practice while staff worried that enduring the cold would make the patients even sicker.
Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners president Dr Samantha Murton told AusDoc it was a common enough scenario in places like south Auckland.
And the reasons for the GP crisis are familiar.
