Source: Royal Australasian College of Surgeons
Wednesday 7 October 2026
Aotearoa New Zealand needs a long-term plan to grow and retain the surgical workforce needed to provide timely care to people across the country, says the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS).
RACS is calling on political parties to commit to planning, growing and retaining a surgical workforce capable of meeting current and future need for timely surgical care as part of its election priorities.
RACS President Dr Phil Morreau says governments need to look beyond political cycles and “silver bullet” solutions to provide leadership for the long-term.
“We need to look at the whole pipeline – from medical school, prevocational education, specialist training and into the consultant workforce,” Dr Morreau says.
“That means having enough training places, enough surgeons to supervise and train the next generation, enough jobs for newly qualified surgeons and the right support to retain surgeons in Aotearoa.
“We also need to make sure there are appropriate pathways for well-qualified international medical graduates to contribute to our surgical workforce, while maintaining the high standards and patient safeguards expected in Aotearoa.”
RACS has been working with Te Whatu Ora on measures to improve retention of New Zealand-trained surgeons, including advance offers of employment that give Trainees greater certainty about opportunities to remain in Aotearoa after completing their specialist training.
But Dr Morreau says workforce planning needs to be more deliberate and coordinated.
“A training place is only one part of the equation. We need the funded positions, operating capacity, clinical exposure and supervision needed to train a competent surgeon.
“If we increase the number of people entering medicine without increasing specialist training capacity, we simply create a bottleneck further down the pipeline.
“Equally, training more surgeons does not solve workforce shortages if they can not gain meaningful employment or retain them in the communities that need them.”
RACS is calling for agreed training volumes across surgical specialties that reflect workforce need across Aotearoa, including regional and rural communities, alongside increased funding for training placements in public and private hospitals. It is also calling for supervision to be planned, allocated and funded nationally, recognising that a shortage of supervisors can constrain both training capacity and career opportunities.
Governments have also been increasingly looking to the private health sector to help ease pressure on public surgical waitlists.
“This can be a good use of available theatre capacity in private hospitals, and there is a role for the private sector in helping address unmet surgical need as well as providing training opportunities” Dr Morreau says.
“But it is not a silver bullet. Using additional private capacity does not, by itself, build the surgical workforce we need for the future or solve the challenge of providing access to surgery in regional and rural communities for example.
“This is not about choosing one approach over another. We need a workforce strategy that does many things at once – training enough surgeons, retaining them, supporting them to work where they are needed and welcoming appropriately qualified international colleagues.
“Ultimately, workforce planning needs to be about the patients and communities we serve. We need enough surgeons, and the wider surgical workforce around them, to provide safe, effective and timely care wherever people live.”
About the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS)
RACS is the leading advocate for surgical standards, professionalism and surgical education in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The College is a not-for-profit organisation that represents more than 8000 surgeons and 1300 surgical Trainees and Specialist International Medical Graduates. RACS also supports healthcare and surgical education in the Asia-Pacific region and is a substantial funder of surgical research. There are nine surgical specialties in Australasia being: Cardiothoracic Surgery, General Surgery, Neurosurgery, Orthopaedic Surgery, Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Paediatric Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Urology and Vascular Surgery.