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.
Roles
Plastic Surgery Fellowship & Locum SMO. Two routes in.
We advertise Fellow and Locum SMO positions to the international market. Permanent appointments happen here, but almost always after a fellowship or locum where both sides have had time to confirm the fit.
6–12 months
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.
Fellowship · 12 months
Twelve months. Four operating days a week. Free range.
A twelve-month post-CCT (or equivalent — Facharzt, FEBOPRAS, FEBHS, FRACS, post-Membership Polish second specialisation) position for surgeons who want operative volume, breadth, and clinical autonomy increasingly difficult to obtain in European tertiary centres.
What you'll do
You will operate four out of five days. The fifth is non-operative: clinics, multidisciplinary meetings, teaching, and ward rounds. You will be the primary operating surgeon on the majority of your cases. You will run your own clinic. You will take part in the on-call roster and be the first line for plastic surgery trauma overnight, with consultant cover always available.
Case mix
- Free flap reconstruction (head and neck, breast, lower limb, melanoma, sarcoma)
- Hand trauma — high volume, including replantation
- Skin cancer and melanoma reconstruction across the full complexity range
- General trauma and developing orthoplastic case stream
- Cleft and craniofacial — regular exposure through Mr Kwon's lists if of interest
- Burns
- Elective reconstructive work
Fellow positions in microsurgery and hand form part of the senior-registrar establishment. Stream of interest is discussed at application. (Volume does not currently support a dedicated burns fellow.)
Who this is for
Fellows must be eligible for Provisional General registration via the Comparable Health System (CHS) pathway with the Medical Council of New Zealand. This is the standard route for international fellows and is realistic for surgeons with recent experience in any of the 29 CHS-recognised countries — the UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, USA, Canada, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries are all on the list. Practical eligibility requires 33 of the last 48 months at ≥20 hours/week practising in a CHS country, at a similar level of responsibility to the proposed Waikato role. We will support your application but the process is yours to drive — start it early.
A note on what comes after
Several of our current consultants joined the unit as fellows and transitioned to longer-term or permanent appointments. We do not promise this on application — it depends on unit need, your performance, and mutual fit — but we will be direct with you about whether a longer-term role is realistically on the table well before your fellowship ends. We have no interest in stringing anyone along.
Locum SMO · 6–12 months
Six to twelve months. Full consultant role. Test-drive New Zealand.
We hire locum SMOs for defined periods — typically six to twelve months — to cover consultant absences, bridge to permanent appointment, and manage workload while we work through the two unfilled SMO posts in our establishment.
Who this works for
- Consultants between substantive posts in Europe, Australia, or the UK
- Surgeons curious about New Zealand without committing permanently from a distance
- Recently qualified consultants wanting consolidated independent practice in a high-volume centre
- Surgeons with subspecialty expertise (microsurgery, hand, melanoma, cleft, burns) we are actively looking to add to the unit
What you'll do
Full SMO scope. Independent operating lists, clinics, on-call participation, MDT participation. We will not waste your experience.
Registration
Locum SMOs from overseas typically apply for Provisional General registration via the Comparable Health System (CHS) pathway — the experience-based route through MCNZ that recognises recent practice in any of the 29 CHS-listed countries (UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, USA, Canada, the Nordic countries, and others). Eligibility requires 33 of the last 48 months at ≥20 hours/week practising at a similar level to the proposed Waikato role. We support you through this. Provisional General registration is supervised practice; you work as a full SMO with a nominated supervising consultant for the first twelve months.
Note: locum SMOs and fellows on Provisional General are not eligible for ACC private practice. The gateway to ACC private work is full vocational registration, which requires a separate (longer) Provisional Vocational pathway and a minimum of twelve months of supervised consultant work. For locum positions of six to twelve months, the Provisional General route is faster, cheaper, and the practical fit. Surgeons committing long-term should discuss the Provisional Vocational route with us — we are happy to support either.
A note on progression
Several of our current consultants joined as locum SMOs and transitioned to permanent appointment once both sides were confident the fit was right. We don't advertise permanent posts directly because the realistic entry path for almost any international consultant is provisional vocational registration via a locum or fellow position. If we want you to stay and the unit can accommodate it, we will tell you well before your locum ends. If we can't, we will tell you that too.
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