Doctor D. Down Under

Kia Ora! I'm sitting in the Wellington Airport waiting for my flight back to Palmerston North, where my car is waiting to take me back to Taihape after a busy weekend. The South Island! Te Anau is the town I drove to from Queenstown via rental car, a two hour journey. The town and Milford Sound, my other destination, are on the south end of this island.  The guide for our nature cruise said that it rains 4-9 meters per year here.  When I arrived, the mountains were enveloped in low white clouds, an air of mystery in the sky, with on and off fine rain.  Te Anau itself has some charm, bordering the second largest lake in New Zealand (Lake Taupo being the largest.)  It is also quite deep (greater than 400 meters in places) and cold, but people do swim in it in the summer.  The town is full of tourists, most bent on seeing Milford Sound either via tramping the Milford Track or like me, going via coach bus, and hence to a water cruise.  I was able to walk a...

Tena koutou on Dec. 1, 2019, I promised to talk about the medical system here in New Zealand, or at least the perspective I have in a rural farming town in mid-south North Island.  Going back to May 2019,  I had a description of the the Taihape Health clinic in front of me on my computer to consider as a locum tenens physician, and then an interview by phone.  I had my misgivings.  Why not the coast, or the South Island?  Why a place I couldn't even find in Fodor's Guide to New Zealand?  And the interview was not reassuring. I told them I didn't really have experience reducing fractures and casting them.  All ok. I said I hadn't really treated cuts with stitches for awhile.  O.K. Another locum physician came on the phone and told me how she reduced a shoulder dislocation when she first arrived.  I signed on.  There was the catch that on call was shared among the doctors and nurses.  This consisted of a Saturday clinic from ...