Abstract
Introduction: The burden of the costs of medical training remains unclear for strategically important cohorts of students. We therefore explored concern with educational costs in Māori, Pasifika and New Zealand European medical school graduates.
Methods: Using data from the Medical Schools Outcomes Database (MSOD) in the years 2011 to 2023, we followed a national combined cohort of 2621 graduates at three time points until postgraduate year 3 (PGY3). We compared the proportions of graduates indicating concern with the costs of medical school education and vocational training (4 or 5 on Likert scale) with those indicating little or no concern (1-3 on Likert scale).
Results: At exit from medical school, the cohort of Pasifika graduates showed a significantly higher proportion of concerned individuals regarding vocational training costs (16 (8.9%) of 179 vs 17 (3.9%) of 434 for Māori and 65 (3.2%) of 2008 for New Zealand European, 2=14.9, p=0.0006). In addition, Māori medical school graduates were significantly more concerned with the cost of medical school education at PGY1 (24 (10.9%) of 220 vs 2 (3.1%) of 64 for Pasifika and 74 (6.2%) of 1188 for New Zealand European, 2=7.8, p=0.019). No significant effects were seen at the PGY3 time point suggesting that concerns may reduce over time.
Conclusions: With increasing numbers of Māori and Pasifika medical graduates, concern with educational costs may increase in future. However, our results are reassuring in that concern with educational costs in New Zealand remains low overall, even in strategically important cohorts of medical graduates.