Overworked GPs are considering leaving the workforce amid an increased demand for face-to-face consultations and a critical staffing shortage.
It comes despite a workplace survey from the Medical Council of New Zealand, released last week, showing improvements in representation in the health sector.
According to the data, there are 523 new doctors practicing in 2022 compared to last year.
It also shows a record 4.6% of doctors identify as Māori, the highest proportion to date and double the 2.3% recorded in 2000.
But with Māori making up 16.5% of New Zealand's population, they remain significantly underrepresented in the medical workforce.
Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners president Samantha Murton said increasing the number of Māori and Pasifika doctors is "extraordinarily important, and we need to have more coming through to get them up to a number that reflects the population".
"It makes a difference to people having doctors who reflect themselves, and that's what we need to focus on," she said.
GP Dr Api Talemaitoga said while he "would like the new GPs working here to be a reflection of the people that we serve in this area", recruiting over the past three years has proved to be a challenge.
"That may be a nice to have, but I'm not optimistic that I can be sure it happens," he said.
While the number of doctors practising in New Zealand has increased by 2.9% in the last year, GPs make up a smaller proportion of the population than they once did.
Almost 40% of doctors were GPs between 1980 and 2000, now that number is only 25%, raising concerns about workloads and burnout.
Dr Talemaitoga has been practicing for 25 years, but is now considering retirement.
He said there has been a spike in "revenge consultations" from patients following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
"They haven't been seen for up to three years. They tolerated the phone consults, now people want to be seen ... and so the 'business as usual' has really ramped up," he said.
The National Party's health spokesperson, Shane Reti, says there are "primarily not enough GPs to share the workload".
"We're now falling behind our ration of GPs to population, and that puts a lot of pressure on GPs who turn up every day, stay late at night to do their administration component, which is starting to balloon well past the clinical component."
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