Our data

Registered doctors by region

Doctors on the medical register with a current practising certificate who have completed Council's workforce survey.

Explanation of terms used in this dashboard

Region and limitations around location data

Region means the Te Whatu Ora region we estimate the doctor is most likely practising in. Please see the Te Whatu Ora website for a list of the regions.

We recommend caution when interpreting or drawing conclusions from location data. Several limitations restrict how accurately we can report on where doctors work. This includes differing levels of precision in the workplace data we hold for doctors as well as challenges around representing the location of doctors who routinely work across multiple regions.

Doctors often work in more than one location. However, we need to allocate each doctor to a single region for reporting purposes. This means some locations where a doctor works will not be reflected in the results.

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. This page is not yet updated to follow the standard above as it uses data collected before this date. This page will be updated in the next update - 30 June 2025.

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 - 11 as of 30 June 2024. 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).