Immigrating to New Zealand as a Doctor

Today I'm going to (briefly) describe the process of moving to New Zealand as a doctor. New Zealand's lack of doctors was exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, where doctors and other medical workers were given preferential treatment to enter New Zealand, including expedited pathways to residency.

That is still the case for medical doctors, who are eligible to apply directly for residency rather than having to go through the normal work visa route. The first step to immigrating to NZ as a doctor is to register with the New Zealand Medical Council.

They may direct you to other organisations if needed for additional registration, but typically, this is done through the medical council who will check your academic qualifications, whether or not they are exempt from assessment, or require further assessment, and will conduct reference checks to ensure your claimed work history lines up.

The type of registration required is NZ provisional general, general, provisional vocational, vocational or special purpose locum tenens registration, or a letter of eligibility for one of these different forms of registration. It is important to remember however that your qualifications and/or training will need to come from a comparable health system. For example, South African GPs usually struggle to gain registration in New Zealand without having to undertake further training, like the NZREX course, which is fairly expensive. The rules are different again for specialists, and this is something you can discuss with the NZMC.

You will also need a job offer with an accredited employer - virtually all public hospitals are registered, and some private ones are too. Your employer will know whether they are accredited or not. You will need to be paid at, or above the median wage, which will not be an issue. From there, you can apply for residence via the Green List, and include partners and dependent children - the type of evidence required for residence is substantial (in terms of family documentation) and is outside of the scope of this article.

As always, this information is intended to be of a general nature only, and not individual or specific immigration advice. If you would like to book in a FREE 15 minute Whatsapp call, you can book in here.