Our data

Vocational training

Doctors on the medical register with a current practising certificate who have reported they are participating in vocational training.

Explanation of terms used in this dashboard

Vocational training

Once a doctor successfully completes prevocational medical training and has received registration within a general scope of practice, a doctor is then eligible to enrol in a vocational medical training programme. Doctors undertaking this training are referred to as trainee doctors and are usually employed as registrars.

The aim of the vocational medical training programme is to ensure that doctors further develop specialist clinical and professional skills. The broad goals of vocational medical training are to produce doctors eligible for vocational registration within a recognised scope of practice.

See the following page on our website for more information:
https://www.mcnz.org.nz/registration/medical-education/vocational-specialist-training-and-recertification-programmes/

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".

Gender data

The Council supports the right of people to identify with non-binary genders and have this reflected in their official record. Doctors can update their recorded gender identity at any time through the myMCNZ portal.

There are a small number of doctors on the register with a current practising certificate who identify as gender diverse - 14 as of 31 March 2025. We have not presented these doctors as a separate group when data has been broken down by gender because of the small size of the group, and the need to preserve privacy.  

Gender is a complex area. Not all doctors who identify as a different gender from what they were assigned at birth will have chosen to identify as Gender Diverse.  Some will have chosen to record the gender with which they do identify (Male or Female).