Eight in ten resident doctors. Half of senior doctors. The conditions driving burnout in New Zealand healthcare are structural. The response needs to be too.
The evidence
80%
of NZ resident doctors scored high on at least one dimension of burnout in 2024.
NZ Medical Journal, 2024
50%
of senior doctors and dentists likely suffering burnout — unchanged over five years.
ASMS, 2021
38%
of GPs rated themselves highly burnt out in 2024; 35% intend to retire within five years.
RNZCGP Workforce Survey, 2024
What it looks like
Clinicians staying late to finish notes. Sick leave climbing on every roster. RMOs leaving for Australia. GPs working roughly seven hours of unpaid time each week to keep their practices running. Nurses, allied health and kaimahi hauora absorbing demand that has outgrown supply. The classic picture is exhaustion plus moral injury: clinicians who can't deliver the standard of care they were trained to provide, and who carry that home.
For HR directors, clinical leaders and boards, the operational picture is just as clear. Vacancy rates, ACC psychological injury claims, locum spend, sick leave and intent-to-leave data are all moving in the wrong direction. Resilience training, EAP apps and wellbeing campaigns can't reverse them on their own. The drivers sit in the conditions, not in the people.
The drivers
Demand has outgrown supply across general practice, hospital medicine, nursing and allied health. Vacancy rates compound: those who remain absorb the shortfall, which accelerates the next wave of attrition. The RNZCGP, ASMS and Te Whatu Ora workforce data all point in the same direction.
The average GP works 35.9 hours per week but is paid for only 28.7 (RNZCGP, 2023). Senior doctors routinely report 60+ hour weeks. Massey's national data shows working 55 or more hours per week increases burnout risk by more than four times.
Clinicians describe distress at being unable to deliver the care they believe patients need — a finding consistent across ASMS, NZNO and RNZCGP reports. Moral injury is structurally different from burnout, but in NZ healthcare today the two travel together.
How we help
3 Big Things works with healthcare organisations to do three things at once.
Identify the specific drivers of burnout in your workforce using psychosocial hazard assessments aligned to ISO 45003 and WorkSafe NZ guidance. Not a survey; a clinical reading of your conditions.
Equip your leaders to recognise and respond early with executive coaching and manager development designed for the realities of clinical leadership in Aotearoa.
Provide registered-psychologist support for clinicians already at the edge through a confidential pathway that sits alongside — not inside — your organisation.
We understand the commercial and clinical reality of running a healthcare service in New Zealand: the workforce pipeline, the ACC and Te Whatu Ora context, the constraints of capitation, the realities of rural and rostered work. We design our interventions around them.
Talk to us