12-month appointment
Fellowship
Twelve months, four operating days a week, free range. Primary operator on the majority of cases, your own clinic, first-line trauma on call with consultant cover. Streams in microsurgery, hand and burns.
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery · Waikato Hospital
Plastic Surgery
in the Waikato.
New Zealand's only RACS-verified Level 1 Trauma Centre. A regional tertiary unit serving 940,000 people across the upper North Island — with the operative tempo to keep you sharp and the lifestyle to keep you here.
01
Why Waikato
Tertiary referral centre for Te Manawa Taki — the central and eastern North Island. New Zealand's only RACS-verified Level 1 Trauma Centre. The unit runs a daily elective list, a daily trauma list, weekend trauma lists, and two skin shops on most days. The consultant group trained across Australia, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.
02
Life outside the hospital
Live on a “lifestyle block” — a small rural holding of a few hectares — within cycling distance of theatre, or in a Cambridge or Hamilton home for the price of an Auckland apartment. Forty-five minutes to Raglan surf, forty-five to east-coast beaches, ninety to Auckland International. Hobbiton, Waitomo, the Coromandel — your weekends are not a search problem.
03
Work that respects life
ACC removes the malpractice insurance burden and personal civil liability of European or North American practice. The four-day operating week is real. Annual leave is generous and actually taken. Specific contract terms — non-clinical time, CME entitlements, leave allowances — differ between fellow (registrar-grade, RDA contract) and locum SMO (consultant-grade, ASMS contract) positions; see the role pages for detail.
At a glance
The shape of the unit.
What you can expect to operate on, with whom, and at what tempo.
940k
Catchment
Te Manawa Taki — 5 districts
23
Medical staff
21 currently posted
L1
Trauma centre
NZ's only RACS-verified
4×
Melanoma rate
vs UK, US, Canada
Two routes in
Fellowship or Locum SMO.
The two positions we currently advertise to the international market. Permanent appointments happen — but almost always after a fellowship or locum here first.
Consultant appointment
Locum SMO
Full consultant role for surgeons between substantive posts, or curious about NZ without committing from a distance. Independent operating lists, clinics, MDT, on-call. Test-drive the unit — and us.
Voices
What the people who have done it say.
Candidates trust other surgeons more than they trust recruitment copy. We've collected short, unedited pieces from recent fellows and locum SMOs.
I started my fellowship at Waikato Hospital in March and have had an excellent operative experience so far, with 4–5 days of surgery each week.
Heavy exposure to hand trauma, skin cancer reconstruction, and microsurgery, alongside a broad range of plastic and reconstructive surgical cases.
Juan Sebastian Gadler
Current Fellow · Germany
Get in touch