Rural Generalist CME Workshop 2026

Overview

The team that delivers the Rural Postgraduate Programme, in conjunction with the Cook Islands Ministry of Health and the Division of Rural Hospital Medicine, presents the Rural Generalist CME Workshop 2026. We hold this event in Aotearoa or Rarotonga. In 2026, it will be held in Rarotonga at the Crown Beach Resort & Spa.

This workshop is aimed at generalist doctors who work in rural hospitals and/or rural general practice. We aim to provide evidence-based, clinical updates that take into account the rural context. We engage speakers who either work rurally or have a strong understanding of the challenges of working remotely, with limited resources. It is also a really great opportunity to connect with colleagues from across Aotearoa – growing and strengthening our rural health community.

Since the Cook Islands Ministry of Health and the Rural Postgraduate Programme first held the workshop at Rarotonga Hospital in 2012, the workshop has also provided a forum for exchange of clinical, professional, and cultural experience between doctors working in New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

Over the years we have been able to use some of the surplus to provide ongoing support for the training and CME of Cook Islands doctors. The Rural Postgraduate Programme has been funding the costs of attendance of Cook Islands doctors to the CME workshops.

The Rural Postgraduate Programme is also a partner of the Cook Islands General Practice Training Programme.

If you are interested in previous programme content, please contact:

Email centrerural@otago.ac.nz

Programme

The workshop will provide medical updates for Rural New Zealand clinicians and their Pacific Island counterparts. Topic areas include toxicology, neonatal resuscitation, depression and anxiety, cultural safety, ultrasound, and more.

View the workshop programme for detailed information (PDF)

Speakers

Dr Nicky Gaffney

Nicky is an Emergency Physician at Tauranga Hospital, though currently on sabbatical in the magical Cook Islands. She loves teaching and is passionate about ultrasound, regularly running ultrasound courses in Tauranga to upskill the local crew in POCUS. While in the Cook Islands, she is helping to roll out the first WHO Basic Emergency Care Course for the local staff.

Her talks are entitled 'POCUS in the wild: Tips, tricks and traps for rural urgent care' and 'The pain game: MSK ultrasound and nerve blocks (a practical session)'.

Dr Dinesha Kumarawansa

Dr Dinesha Kumarawansa is a Rural Hospital Specialist and GP based in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Her clinical work encompasses both primary and secondary care. She holds teaching roles with both medical schools in New Zealand; Senior Professional Practice Fellow for the University of Otago, convening the postgraduate rural papers and Academic Co-Ordinator for the Te Kuiti Rural Medical Immersion Programme at the University of Auckland.

Her talk is entitled 'An immigrant's journey of cultural safety'. Born in Sri Lanka and raised in New Zealand, Dr Dinesha explores her childhood and formative years being raised between two different cultures and how these years and the years through medical school and the communities she has worked with have shaped her clinical practice of cultural safety.

Dr Mark Lankshear

Mark trained in Sheffield, United Kingdom and the surrounding area, with a focus on mental health. He spent time in in-patient units and an innovative home treatment team and as a Substance Misuse Manager before completing his General Practice training.

He moved to the Hokianga, New Zealand in 2007 and has worked as a GP and rural hospital doctor. Mark has a special interest in Mental Health and he has worked part time as a Community Psychiatric Moss for nearly 10 years in the Hokianga, alongside his General Practice work until he moved sideways to take on the Medical Director role.

Currently, he is back working as a GP and rural hospital doctor, but maintains an active liaison with the local mental health teams and acts as a resource providing specific training for the local community teams and medical trainees.

He recently joined the University of Otago's Centre for Rural Health as a co-convener for the 'Reflections in Rural Clinical Practice' paper.

Dr Trevor Lloyd

Dr Trevor Lloyd was born in Southland and grew up in Central Otago. He has worked as a GP and rural hospital doctor in Vanuatu and around New Zealand, and has been involved over the years in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research. Trevor has been a doctor at Dunstan Hospital for 26 years, now working part-time, and currently puts a lot of his energy into writing stories.

The presentation, entitled 'Tales of the South Pacific' will take the form of a “book launch”, describing Trevor’s transition into creative writing alongside his clinical work, and introducing an as-yet-unpublished novel-length fictional biography of an Australian missionary murdered in Vanuatu in 1906, including Trevor’s own experiences of working on the same island.

Dr Lisa Ten Eyck

Dr Lisa Ten Eyck is an Emergency Medicine specialist and Head of Department at Thames Hospital, a rural emergency department on the Coromandel Peninsula in Aotearoa New Zealand. She also teaches rural and emergency medicine through the University of Otago, with a particular interest in the realities of practicing far from tertiary resources.

Originally trained in the United States, Lisa has worked clinically both in Alaskan Arctic  and below the Antarctic Circle. Those experiences  dovetail with her professional interests  in austere medicine, retrieval systems, and the improvisational problem-solving often required in rural care.

Her academic interests include rural systems of care, case reports, transport medicine, and the occasionally messy interface between guidelines and real life. She has presented work on critical care retrieval barriers in rural New Zealand and remains especially interested in how geography shapes clinical decision-making.

Outside medicine, Lisa hikes slowly but enthusiastically, paints landscapes in watercolor and ink, and is perpetually collecting stories that probably belong in case reports.

The title of Lisa's talk is 'Toxicology story time: Anecdotes from the edge'.

Dr Susan Weggery

Dr Susan Weggery is a Fellow of the Division of Rural Hospital Medicine and a Senior Medical Officer based at Lakes District Hospital in Queenstown. She has a passion for teaching neonatal resuscitation to rural clinicians and is a current New Zealand Resuscitation Council Neonatal Life Support instructor. She is also the Chief Assessor and Board of Studies member for the Division of Rural Hospital Medicine.

Her talk is entitled 'Neonatal Resuscitation: not just the realm of the paediatrician'. Her talk will highlight the need for neonatal resuscitation training in rural communities and will cover what’s changed, what’s cool and what’s coming in neonatal resuscitation.

Format

There will be about 15 hours of CME across the three days.

The Rural CME Workshop has been endorsed by The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) and has been approved for up to 15 CME credits for the General Practice Educational Programme (GPEP) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) purposes.

Workshops are delivered in a small group interactive style to allow for in-depth discussion and will focus on rural management issues.

Max number of participants is about 25.

Key details

Dates and times

Registration

• 1 May 2026 (Early bird registration closes)
• 26 June 2026 (Final registration closes)

Workshop

• Start: 9am, Wednesday, 5 August 2026
• Finish: 4pm, Friday, 7 August 2026

Workshop costs

• Rural Hospital Medicine
  $1,400 (early bird registration) and $1,600 (regular registration)
• General Practice
  $1,200 (early bird registration) and $1,300 (regular registration)

Venue

Crown Beach Resort & Spa

Enquiries

Please contact:

Lucinda Thatcher
Workshop Convener
Email lucinda.thatcher@otago.ac.nz