From the paper:
You might say Wellington Hospital has had a touch of Irish luck.
Twenty-two foreign junior doctors have just arrived in Wellington – the biggest contingent of overseas-trained doctors to start at one time. Half of the group are Irish friends who trained together and wanted to stay together.
Caoimhe Hartley, 24, said the friends had spent six years training together at University College Dublin. They then worked at the same hospital before deciding to have a change of scene.
"We all wanted to stay together in a big group . . . Because we are all together, we will have a great time." They consulted a recruitment agency and ended up in Wellington because it was the only place that could take them all at the same time. "We had asked to be in New Zealand."
Stewart McKenna, 25, said they had been regularly working 120 hours a week in Ireland.
Sarah Doherty, 24, added: "The working conditions are much better here."
Besides doing their bit to alleviate New Zealand's doctor shortages, the men, who are flatting together, also appear keen to help tackle the "man drought" – asking if The Dominion Post could say they were keen to meet good Kiwi girls.
Nine of the new doctors will start off working for Capital and Coast District Health Board in Wellington, and two others will work at Hutt Hospital. They are due to move on to Palmerston North's MidCentral District Health Board after their three-month stint in the Wellington region. Most of the rest of the new group of 22 are from England.
About 250 junior doctors are employed in the greater Wellington region, about a quarter of them trained overseas. Capital and Coast recruitment consultant Cathy Fraser said the DHB hoped the new doctors would decide to stay on.
"We're really excited to get the group of 11 here. It's a bit of a coup."
And in other news, we spoke to four different carpet warehouse people in the last two days, and have somebody coming out to fit new carpet in the whole house on Thursday. I won't be sorry to see the back of that stained, cat-pee-scented, blue floor rag that we currently have!
1 comment:
LOL There really are a lot of Irish people out here. Looks like we can start our own Kiwi version of E.R. (maybe cell it EiRe...?).
As for the carpet, you wouldn't believe the stains on the underside of it when I lifted it up. I kept teling myself that the stains and rusty carpet tacks were from damp getting up from the ground below, but the cat pee smells were hard to ignore!
I'm glad the whole lot, underfelt and all, is being replaced. Next up - underfloor insulation and waterproofing, in case some of those stains weren't cat-related!
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