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July 12, 2023
Rural med school good for Māori says Reti
Peter Verschaffelt
Posted On July 12, 2023
Download AudioOpposition health spokesperson Shane Reti says the new medical school National is promising at Waikato University will be good for Māori and the community.
Labour told the university it was not interested in funding the project soon after it was elected in 2017, and the country’s two existing medical schools say it would replicate existing facilities and is not the best use of limited funding.
But Dr Reti says the idea of a four year graduate medical degree rather than the current six year programme with undergraduate entry is in-line with thinking around the world.
He says it will be cheaper to study in Hamilton, and its rural focus will be good for Maori students and rural Maori communities.
“After the first year so four years, first year will be spent in Hamilton but the next three years all of your training, we somewhat make that commitment that every night you will be back with your family, back in your bed, back in your community. It’s called training in place and the way we do that is we will power up the peripheral hospitals, Taupo, Tokoroa, Te Kuiti and we will send the trainers out to there and the medical students will come to their local peripheral hospital for their clinical training,” he says.
Dr Reti says Auckland and Otago medical schools are up to full capacity.
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