NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE, No. 141 — 21 NOVEMBER 2014

GOVERNMENT NOTICES

General Section

Scopes of Practice and Prescribed Qualifications for the Practice of Medicine in New Zealand

Commencement

This notice is given pursuant to sections 11 and 12 of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, and comes into effect on 22 December 2014. On that date, it replaces the 2013 Notice of Scopes of Practice and Prescribed Qualifications¹. This notice also contains changes coming into effect on 24 November 2015.

Introduction

Under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, the Medical Council of New Zealand ("Council") is required to define the separate areas of medicine and specialties that make up the practice of medicine in New Zealand. The Council’s role is to identify for each of these areas (known as "scopes of practice" or "scopes") the aspects of the practice of medicine covered by each scope. Medical practitioners seeking to practise in New Zealand must first be registered with the Medical Council in one or more relevant scopes of practice.

The Medical Council is also responsible for formally "prescribing" the specific qualifications that medical practitioners must have to be eligible to be registered in each of the scopes of practice. These prescribed qualifications will vary between the different scopes of practice. In many cases, a "prescribed" qualification will be an identified medical degree, or fellowship of a medical college, but in some cases the Council will require a combination of a medical degree, and additional training, or approved experience. In such cases, the medical practitioner will be required to meet all these requirements before he or she will be recognised as having the "prescribed qualification".

To be able to practise medicine in New Zealand, a registered medical practitioner must hold a current practising certificate. To be eligible for a practising certificate, a medical practitioner must meet any recertification or competence programme requirements set by the Council. Recertification and competence programmes are scope-specific programmes, undertaken while in practice and designed to ensure that doctors maintain the required standard of competence within their scope of practice.

This notice provides the current complete list of the scopes of practice within which medical practitioners may practise medicine in New Zealand, and the associated, prescribed qualifications. Where reference is made to relevant information published on the Council’s website, this can be found at www.mcnz.org.nz

Changes coming into effect on 24 November 2015

An initial (Stage 1) consultation process commenced in May 2011. The consultation paper Prevocational training requirements for doctors in New Zealand: a discussion paper on options for an enhanced training framework primarily considered the structural issues of the prevocational framework and was intended to be the first stage of a review of prevocational training.

On 13 December 2011, the Council considered the feedback from the consultation along with recommendations from the Education Committee. The Council made two key decisions about the structure of prevocational training:

• That the length of the clinical attachment will remain at 13 weeks.
• That the length of the period of registration in a provisional general scope of practice will remain at 12 months.

The consultation paper A review of prevocational training requirements for doctors in New Zealand: Stage 2 was released to stakeholders on 28 February 2013. The consultation paper described the background, issues, and objectives for prevocational training in New Zealand.

The second stage of the review proposed changes to the following aspects of prevocational training, and explains