Healthcare jobs

Healthcare jobs

Willem Landman: 

I’m an emergency medicine specialist, I’m originally from South Africa and currently I’m the Clinical Director of Waitemata DHB emergency department. I’ve been working in this organisation for 8 years now and I’m loving every minute of it.

Waitemata District Health Board is responsible for about 500 thousand people, by itself we are comfortably the largest district health board in the country.

We are located right on Lake Pupuke and adjacent to some of the best beaches in New Zealand.

Generally the lifestyle in Auckland is one of the best in the world. Auckland was voted one of the top 10 cities in the world to live in.

New Zealand is really looking to innovate and develop technologies and systems and be a world leader in terms of innovation, and we have to given the size and location of our country so, really we have a unique mix of elements that allows us to become world leaders, and we are world leaders in a lot of innovative work.

There’s lots of opportunities for Doctors, Nurses, other health care professionals anywhere in New Zealand a very large proportion of health care workforce is foreign trained.

So your walking down the corridors in a hospital in New Zealand, it’s like walking through the corridors of the United Nations.

Those arriving in New Zealand with a specialist qualification would need to look for whether their qualification is recognised in New Zealand and often times, even if it isn’t recognised at least a component of their specialist training will be recognised and, they can do bridging work to have their specialty completely recognised.

So we’re very fortunate in New Zealand where much of the focus in healthcare is on the patient rather than directly on the finances. Our decisions are based more on ethical considerations rather than financial considerations.

New Zealand has just the most phenomenal lifestyle available as far as I’m concerned. Its just a wonderful combination of outdoor living, water sports, the sea, tramping and then you’ve got the New Zealand culture which is just such a wonderful family friendly, child friendly culture and safe too.

Its surreal living here coming from somewhere like South Africa but I hear the same from colleagues that come from elsewhere in the world. We’re just so protected over here so, if you like the outdoors and you like community living I think you’re going to struggle to find a better country in the world.

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