Careers

Interview

Dr Vivien Wong

Dr Vivien Wong currently enjoys her Registrar position at Counties Manukau District Health Board and shares with us her experience of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology training programme in Auckland.....

Training to become an O & G Specialist takes six years. You apply to the Integrated Training Programme (ITP) and this takes four years, followed by two years of elective.

One year has to be full time the remainder can be part time. There is a two part exam (written and oral). Teaching days occur once a month.

It's a big learning curve going from being a House Officer to Registrar level but really interesting. O&G is never boring and there are lots of sub-specialties for Registrars to get involved in.

Registrars are given operating lists when they are confident enough, which helps to quickly build skills.

O&G at Middlemore is very busy, rosters change every week. But a typical day involves some of the following:

• on call all week for 1 week
• doing a round in delivery
• emergency work
• ward round
  • typically 10 ante-natal patients
  • typically 15 obstetrics patients
• theatre work may be required at any time, meaning you would be required to stop your ward round and resume after theatre
• Clinics- eg at the Manukau Super Clinic, or going in to Middlemore Hospital for clinics

Patients at Middlemore are clinically very interesting because they often present quite late so Registrars get to see cases like ectopic pregnancies.

National Women's has more O & G Registrars therefore the patient load is lower. National women's also has more Consultants than Middlemore, however the Consultants at Middlemore are resident (i.e. they are available 24/7 which is unique compared with all other O&G departments in the country).