Looking after our future colleagues: an experience from a provincial hospital in New Zealand

Abstract

Obective:

To describe a support group developed in New Zealand for junior resident medical officers.

Conclusions:

Fresh medical graduates starting as junior doctors are faced with numerous stresses. Abusive relationships with supervisor, the need to balance personal and professional lives, limited ability to deal with all of the factual knowledge or with patients adequately, long, unsocial hours, financial pressures, the need to rapidly acquire the organisational skills to manage a job with multiple tasks and multiple interruptions, and being the lowest in the hierarchy are just some of the stresses junior doctors face. We, in our roles as intern supervisors, have found that running weekly support groups along with some structured sessions on how to maintain personal well being have been helpful in providing support to the junior doctors working in our hospital. Our experience is described and the implications are discussed.