Judges wowed by long-serving professor’s qualities of ingenuity, humility, generosity

A 41-year career pursuing excel­lence and generously sharing his knowledge and good hu­mour brought academic GP Bruce Arroll the top award in the 2021 New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

The magic factor is his humility that clearly underpins all of his endeavours

At the awards gala ceremony at Auck­land’s Cordis Hotel on 15 May, Profes­sor Arroll received the ACC Supreme Award after earlier pick­ing up the Green Cross Health Outstanding Contribution to Health Award.

Leesa King, of the Piripoho Nurse Service, was the other final­ist in the Outstanding Contribu­tion to Health Award.

A summary of the judges’ comments credits Professor Arroll’s ingenuity, hu­mility and generosity as traits that gave him the winning “X factor”.

Professor Arroll says he enjoys his work enormously, as a GP, and as professor of general practice and primary health care at the University of Auckland, and director of the Goodfellow Unit.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m working,” he says.

“I like helping students, I like to make an impact: I think making a difference is important. And being an academic general practitioner, there’s lots of op­portunities to be able to make a differ­ence in the world.”

After gaining his medical degree at the University of Auckland in 1979, a young Dr Arroll worked in the hospital system for two years, then in general practice for six months. He spent seven years in Canada, where he trained in family medicine. Back in New Zealand, he completed a PhD at Auckland and stayed on as an academic from 1991.

Professor Arroll has had more than 300 publications in high-impact peer-reviewed journals. He also practises at Greenstone Family Clinic in Manurewa, south Auckland, which he set up with fellow GP Tana Fishman.

He says they established it as a teach­ing, learning and research environ­ment. The idea is all staff, including receptionists, increase their skills.

“I called it a crucible of innovation. I guess we were just open to new ideas.”

The statement nominating Professor Arroll for the Outstanding Contribu­tion to Health Award says that in his university roles he seeks to address health outcome equity.

He applies Treaty of Waitangi princi­ples by adopting a proactive Māori re­cruitment plan, by empowering Māori researchers to deconstruct the Western system, by using his own privilege to inform inequity research, and by pushing for collaborative team health­care delivery, it says.

The nomination also notes he has a ripple effect in wider healthcare practice, for example, via a Northland gout management project with summer students.

The nomination notes he is an international expert with a long list of accolades, qualifications, research activities, work ethic and mana, but has an intrinsic quality of empathy personifying the art of application of evi­dence-based medicine.

“It is this that gives him the X factor and enables him to work and partner with all peoples.”

One judge said it was a privilege to see how great people such as Professor Arroll contribute to primary healthcare and make a positive impact on patients, peers, students and colleagues.

Another notes Professor Arroll has lived a life dedicated to medicine and bringing others along on a journey of improvement. “Bruce Arroll is a role model to the medical community.”

A third said: “In my mind the magic factor is his humility that clearly underpins all of his endeavours.”

Professor Arroll, 68, describes him­self as “grandfather of 4.5 – got another one coming next month”. He says the joy-to-effort ratio is very good.

“Seventy is the new 50,” he says. “I think I’ve still got lots of petrol in the tank, as it were, so no sign of retirement yet.”