A Queenstown-based doctor is on his way to change the Physician's Oath after successfully lobbying the World Medical Association.
In a Mountain Scene opinion column Dr Sam Hazledine, founder of MedRecruit, said four years ago he decided ''something needed to change in the medical system'', but, at that point he wasn't sure what that was.
A year later he began researching the impact of stress on doctors and found 87% were "over-stressed''.
"Stress leads to depersonalisation and emotional disconnection from the patient and depersonalisation leads to increases in major medical errors.
"Despite 'first do no harm' underlining what we do, the way we are being as doctors is causing us to harm our patients.''
Dr Hazledine said it wasn't until last year when he was speaking about well-being to graduating medical students around New Zealand he realised the Declaration of Geneva - ''the modern-day Hippocratic oath'' - did not mention doctor health and well-being.
His research was ''conclusive'', he said.
Doctor well-being was critical to providing the best standard of care, so Dr Hazledine set about lobbying to have it included in the DoG.
That led to the WMA inviting him to present to its annual general assembly to a working group in Taiwan on October 18.
His presentation gained unanimous support and the following day the working group presented the change to the association's ethic's committee, which also supported it unanimously.
The proposed change would now go through public consultation before being presented to the association's general assembly in October next year for ratification.
