Kia ora. You’re welcome at our house. We’d like it to become your home.
Why make Waikato DHB your preferred choice?
We offer
- A tertiary and teaching hospital with an excellent reputation.
- Extensive range of services – so you are exposed to a wide variety of learning experiences.
- Comprehensive orientation.
- A leading edge clinical skills centre on the campus.
- Support and guidance from our helpful RMO Unit.
- The opportunity to grow into a career of your choice – as generalist or specialised as you want.
Add to this
- A vibrant campus – a place to meet new friends as well as learn new skills.
- A city that has everything except traffic gridlock, high rents and parking hassles.
- Outdoor adventures waiting for you to jump in and play.
- All within easy reach of Auckland to the north and the ski-fields of Mt Ruapehu to the south, and beaches to the east and west.
Teaching programme
All first year house officers have two hours of protected time each week to attend teaching sessions. We have a dedicated person who holds and answers the pagers while you are in teaching - if a page is deemed critical you will be summonsed from the meeting to deal with this.
Every Tuesday afternoon, there is a variety of clinical topics presented by senior doctors who are all experts in their fields. These sessions are informal and are usually case-based.
Topics are wide-ranging with an emphasis on a practical approach to caring for patients.
Orientation
To ensure all first year house officers are well prepared to carry out a variety of procedures at Waikato Hospital, they must attend a four-day orientation course before starting work at the hospital (in November of each year).
The course is organised by the RMO Unit in conjunction with the Director of Clinical Training (DCT), and the Prevocational Education Supervisors (PESs), with facilitators coming from a variety of speciality areas.
The clinical learning stations include:
- pain management
- ordering radiology investigations
- infection prevention and control
- laboratory and blood bank
- medication and prescribing
- Emergency Department and acute admissions
- outpatient overview
- completing electronic discharge summaries
- accessing the High Dependency Unit (HCC)
- anaesthesia
- cultural competence with Maori and Pacific patients.
Postgraduate Year 1 training schedule - 2017
When: Tuesdays 1.30 – 2.30pm (bring your lunch)
Venue: CETU meeting room, Level 1 Campbell Johnstone Building
Rotation choices and categories
First year allocations are designed to give Year 1 house officers endorsed general registration after one year if they have satisfactorily completed all four clinical attachments.
During the first six months of employment, Year 1 house officers will not be rostered to work nights (in accordance with Clause 6.5 of the NZRDA DHB MECA).
Each allocated block of clinical attachments comprises of four 13-week attachments. All these attachments are based at Waikato Hospital.
Allocating rotations for Year 1 house officers - Waikato Hospital
Allocation of first year clinical attachments
Waikato DHB's current annual intake of Year 1 house officers for the 2017-2018 year is 35FTE. Each year each house officer is allocated four clinical attachments per year (of 13 weeks duration) and these clinical attachments are specifically accredited by the MCNZ for first year training.
Priority ratings for allocating clinical attachments
All clinical attachments are allocated randomly if applicants make no specific requests.
- PRIORITY 1: Fulfilling MCNZ registration requirements.
- PRIORITY 2: Matching the spread of very popular and less popular clinical attachments.
- PRIORITY 3: Fulfilment of requests.
- PRIORITY 4: Swapping of clinical attachments between individuals with mutual consent and with the approval of the RMO Manager.
- PRIORITY 5: Matching the spread between high and low workload rotations.
Waikato DHB feels that this process is fair to all, but we accept that some individuals may get allocated some clinical attachments they do not like. We aim, at worst, to limit your exposure to 'unfavourable' rotations to one attachment per year if possible.
Information on the New Zealand curriculum framework
PGY1s (or interns as they are referred to by the Medical Council of New Zealand [MCNZ]) must work in accredited clinical attachments under the supervision of a prevocational educational supervisor (PES). Prevocational medical training requires the Waikato DHB to deliver a two-year intern training programme with specific requirements for postgraduate Year 1 (PGY1 house officers) and postgraduate Year 2 (PGY2 house officers).
The MCNZ introduced the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (NZCF) in 2015 – this requires that the Year 1 house officers record their learning, have their progress tracked, create and update their Professional Development Plan (PDP), record continued professional development (CPD) activities plus complete their assessments through an e-portfolio system known as ePort.
The NZCF outlines the learning outcomes – underpinned by the concepts of patient safety and personal development - to be substantively completed in PGY1 and by the end of PGY2. These learning outcomes are to be achieved through clinical attachments, educational programmes and individual learning.
Additionally, every intern is required to complete one clinical attachment in a community based setting over the course of their PGY1 and PGY2 intern years. Therefore a Year 1 house officer may be rotated into a community placement and this may require daily travel or relocation for the duration of the clinical attachment; in such situations, reimbursements can be claimed as per the relevant clauses in the RDA MECA.
Year 1 house officers are expected to meet with their educational supervisor at the beginning of the year and after each clinical attachment and will meet with their clinical supervisor on the clinical attachment at the beginning, mid-way through and at the end of the clinical attachment. It is important that the quarterly assessments are completed within two weeks of finishing a clinical attachment.
At the end of their first year of post graduate work, each Year 1 house officer is expected to have successfully completed four clinical attachments. They must have all assessments, PDP and CPD documentation completed by the date stipulated by their PES, in readiness for the advisory panel performance assessment meeting.
The advisory panel will meet to discuss the overall performance of each year one house officer, assess whether they have met the required standard to be registered in a general scope of practise and are therefore ready to proceed to the next stage of training. The advisory panel will hold the responsibility for endorsing the PDP as acceptable for PGY2.
To apply for registration within a general scope of practice the year one house officer must meet the following requirements.
- The (satisfactory) completion of four accredited clinical attachments.
- The substantive attainment of the learning outcomes outlined in the NZCF.
- Completion of a minimum of 10 weeks full-time equivalent in each clinical attachment. (Full time is equivalent to a minimum of 40 hours per week).
- Advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) certification at the standard of New Zealand Resuscitation Council CORE Level 7, less than 12 months old.