| Dennis Pezaro | |||||||||||||
| I qualified in 1968 after part time training in Healthcare and Student Politics. I had 4 years in Dunedin, punctuated with increasingly frequent locum jobs in Wanaka I realised quickly that I wanted to be a part of th small community of Wanaka and we moved here permanently in 1973 as the solo GP in co-operation with the practice and hospital in Cromwell. The practice grew quickly and I became very involved in the town, particularly the Clutha Valley Hydro development and the subsequent development of Treble Cone & Cardrona skifields. Our practice supplied all the early medical services on the skifields and this helped bring other young doctors to the area. We were granted early recognition as partial radiologists to allow us to take x rays and developed signicicant experience and some expertise in acute trauma. On the worst weekend before wrist guards were invented we set 20 broken wrists and my own experience is of reducing about 80 dislocated shoulders and about 8 dislocated hips. One of the strengths of our practice was that we encouraged visiting consultants to come and start private visiting clinics. This started in friendship but has grown steadily and has become a sound business model in the new health centres. I joined the executive team of NZMA in 1992 and wound up chairing the organisation in 95/96. I do not think I made a valuable contribution, it was the time when the government stopped listening to health professional’s concerns. Then I returned to work in Wanaka until I left the Centre in 2009 and spent 3 years on a locum circuit in Otago/Southland until Dec 2011. I enjoyed going back to solo practices to indulge my passion – that everyone I met had something in their life, of great worth, to be respected, treasured , enjoyed and that the healthcare interaction was to facilitate this core of their being, whether with laughter or tears, medicines or hugs, tea or whisky. My consult room was at the end of a long corridor and that time of walk & talk became important to us both. |
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