The current New Zealand health workforce faces many challenges, including a shortage of resident medical officers. This study explored debt and what factors are important to medical students as they seek to make their decisions about where they will live, work and train after graduation. Fifty-two percent of students planned to leave New Zealand soon after graduation. The average debt was $75,752 which many students thought would influence career choices. The data will help in New Zealand health workforce planning.

Coordinated research into medical education is needed. This paper summarises a consensus view of priority areas that fit under an overarching theme of “Growing a professional workforce”. Seven key areas of activity have been identified: engaging in community and clinical learning environments; improving recruitment and retention; improving phases of transition; assessing professional behaviours; promoting quality feedback; engaging clinical teachers and educational and clinical leadership.

New Zealand medical students in their 6th (final) year of study are called trainee interns. Approximately 360 medical students graduate from New Zealand medical schools each year and compete for jobs as first-year doctors at 20 district health boards. The ACE (Advance Choice of Employment) Scheme is a cooperative matching scheme used by the DHBs and job applicants to administer the complex process of matching employees with employers. The scheme has been run for 7 years and continues to be successful. There are some operational areas that continue to need improvement.

Medical students at the University of Otago are now required to sign a ‘student code’ on beginning medical school. This new requirement has been put in place in response to changes to the medical curriculum that have resulted in earlier and increased contact with patients, healthcare staff and the general public, and in order to recognise and formalise the students’ own learning needs. While a student code can most obviously be useful for disciplinary and assessment purposes, the authors make a claim for the code to be used as educational tool to assist students to internalise their obligations to others. The student code, while having common values espoused in other extant codes, is framed with the student experience in mind. The authors discuss the process of development, implementation and proposed review.