Working as a Doctor: New Zealand vs Australia (What I Learned)

Summary

Eunice Chou compares her experience as a junior doctor in Christchurch, New Zealand, with her first four months at Sunshine Coast University Hospital in Queensland, Australia. She says the countries feel broadly similar in culture and day-to-day work, but she noticed substantial differences in hospital funding and staffing, working hours, pay, training, and living costs.

Health systems and hospitals

• Funding and resources: In her experience, Australian hospitals appeared better funded and had more staff, equipment, and computers. She contrasts Christchurch Hospital’s long-delayed construction project with the much quicker completion of Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
• Staffing: A Queensland general-medicine team typically included a registrar, resident, and intern, while her Christchurch team could have only a registrar and house officer.
• Public and private care: Australia’s private-health-insurance system allows some patients to be treated in private hospitals, which Chou felt helps reduce pressure on the public system. She says New Zealand has far fewer private hospitals and that its public hospitals are often very busy.
• Administration and treatment access: She found Australian practice more bureaucratic, with additional paperwork and restrictions, including processes for accessing some publicly funded medicines. New Zealand felt more relaxed to her. She also felt Australia offered access to more medicines and treatments, including some advanced cancer therapies.

Working hours and overtime

In Queensland, Chou’s contract was for 76 hours per fortnight, or about 38 hours a week. In her experience, long shifts were capped at 12 hours. By contrast, she had worked shifts of up to 15 hours and 30-hour weekends in New Zealand. She cites a Te Whatu Ora/union provision limiting rostered work to 16 hours a day, 72 hours in seven days, or 140 hours in 14 days.

She found the Australian workload less intense, partly because of better staffing. When work ran late, she could claim overtime; she says overtime was not handled that way in New Zealand. In the New Zealand system she describes, rotations were assigned categories based on expected hours, with higher-hour rotations receiving higher pay. She felt this could compensate doctors for demanding rosters rather than lead hospitals to add staff, potentially contributing to fatigue and errors.

Overall, she valued finishing on time or being paid when she stayed late, and said she felt more rested in Australia.

Pay and other financial considerations

Chou says Australian doctors earn more than New Zealand doctors at comparable career stages, before overtime. However, Australian doctors pay training and professional costs themselves, including registration, program, and exam fees. In her experience, those expenses were reimbursed in New Zealand.

She also missed the meals provided by her Christchurch hospital, which covered lunch and dinner on long days. One Australian benefit she highlighted was salary packaging: eligible expenses, such as rent, mortgage payments, or parking, can be paid using pre-tax salary, potentially reducing tax.

Training and competition

Although Chou was already partway through physician training under the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) program, moving to Australia meant she still had to apply for a local training position. She says positions were limited and applicants could face assessments such as OSCEs. She found entry into physician training more straightforward in New Zealand, in part because she perceived less competition for medical registrar positions.

She describes Australian training as more structured, with compulsory teaching sessions and regular attention to exam progress. She was unsuccessful in applying for GP training in her preferred Australian area. She says the intake had only 20 positions and used the Casper Aptitude Test. She found the process more competitive than in New Zealand, where she says GP training places were easier to access because of the shortage of GPs.

She expects other specialties, such as radiology, surgery, and dermatology, to be even more competitive. She plans to apply again.

Workplace culture and lifestyle

Chou found colleagues welcoming and helpful in both countries. Sunshine Coast University Hospital felt younger, more open to new ideas, and more likely to employ part-time consultants. Christchurch Hospital had established systems and smooth workflows, but she perceived its doctors as older on average and its hierarchy as more rigid.

She found Sunshine Coast more expensive than Christchurch, especially for rent and setting up a household, while cautioning that it may not represent the cost of living across Australia. Her overall advice is to consider where you want to live, not just where you want to work. She enjoys her life outside work in Australia, despite her disappointment at not getting onto training.

Speakers and sources featured

• Speaker: Eunice Chou, a doctor comparing her work experience in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
• Organizations and programs mentioned: Te Whatu Ora; the ADI union clause; the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP); AHPRA; and the Casper Aptitude Test.