The first time many new doctors face an emergency situation could be on the job, with new research showing few have faced a trauma or resuscitation call during their medical training.
The findings come as part of a new study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal today. Titled 'Are they ready? A survey of postgraduate year 1 and 2 surgical house officer', it canvassed the experience of a number of house officers in their first years on the job.
Undertaken by a group of Auckland doctors, the research goal was to establish how prepared the new graduate doctors were at managing the complex demands of working within the medical profession.
What if found was only "50% had ever attended a trauma call or resuscitation call with clinical teams" while still a medical student.
Alongside greater exposure to emergency situations, they also found that many students would have liked more teaching around how to take care of their own mental and physical well-being and more advice around how to best manage their workloads.
One of the study authors Vanshay Bindra is also in his first year of work at North Shore Hospital.
"I've hit the ground running," he said. "With Covid, hospitals are busy all the time at the moment."
Overall he describes his year as being fun, but said there are some challenges starting his working-life off the back of Covid-19.
"I felt prepared with the medical knowledge, but one thing I wasn't really prepared for was how much fatigue there would be with this job."
It's a job that's becoming harder, as New Zealand's health care system continues to struggle with a lack of staff.
That shortage has also affected the availability of student placements, in hard-to-staff areas like general practice.
New Zealand Medical Students' Association president Anu Kaw said many of her peers have struggled to get a placement at a GP clinic.
"It does have some long term consequences for sure," she said. "For students [to work in] that space, obviously students need to have exposure in that area."
Surgeon Jonathan Koea, a senior doctor involved in the research, said the findings reflect the challenges of training new doctors within a workforce that's always evolving.
"It's the hardest thing in the world to train students to be doctors," he said. "Then if you look at the complexity of the health system, it's ever changing, it gives you some sense of the breadth and depth of skill set that's required as a doctor."
He's confident with the right support, the younger generation of doctors will quickly learn.
The study was of a small sample size of 13 junior doctors, but the research authors felt its recommendations were applicable to the wider junior medical workforce.
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