Our data

Vocational

Doctors registered in a vocational scope of practice with a current practising certificate

Explanation of terms used in this dashboard

International medical graduates (IMGs)

We define international medical graduates (IMGs) as doctors who obtained their primary medical qualification in a country other than New Zealand. This does not necessarily mean a doctor is new to the workforce. A lot of IMGs will have worked in New Zealand for many years, sometimes decades.

The country of a doctor's primary medical qualification is separate from their ethnicity and country of birth or nationality.  

Reporting period

We report data by fiscal year (FY) - 1 July to 30 June. For example, the 2023 reporting year is 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. For snapshots, we will specify the date - for example doctors on the medical register as of 30 June 2023.

Ethnicity data

We collect ethnicity data from doctors as part of the workforce survey, completed by doctors at the time of renewing their annual practising certificate. Doctors can choose not to report their ethnicity. Ethnicity data has been linked with registration data to enable reporting on the demographic breakdown of registered medical doctors.

Doctors can report up to six ethnicities. However, when we report data, we assign each doctor a single ethnicity using Statistics New Zealand’s prioritisation standard. The ethnicity we use in analysis is the one reported by the doctor with the highest priority. This is aggregated up to level 1 of the classification standard to preserve privacy. 

The priority order at level 1 of Statistics New Zealand's classifications is:  

  1. Māori 
  2. Pacific Peoples 
  3. Asian
  4. Middle Eastern/Latin American/African
  5. Other Ethnicity
  6. European
  7. Residual Categories.

We updated our data collection to fully align with Statistics New Zealand standard from 1 July 2024. As a result, some pages on the dashboard may vary slightly as they use data collected before this date. These pages will be updated in the next update - 30 June 2025. For example, some pages may refer to the category of "Pacific Peoples" as "Pasifika".