Well - known GP returning to Wānaka

odt.co.nz · Feb 14, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Long-term and well-known Wānaka GP Lucy O’Hagan will return home as a guest speaker at next month’s Aspiring Conversations and then she will stay for good. Originating from Southland, Dr O’Hagan spent 20 years as a GP in Wānaka and owned Aspiring Medical Centre. She completed her book Everything but the Medicine late last year and after five years living in coastal Wellington, she is returning to Hawea Flat. ‘‘It’s home. We have had a really great adventure, it is quite good when your kids leave home you can sort of be mobile.’’ The experienced doctor and author will not return to general practice but look to move her work online. ‘‘I am a little bit out of touch with where Wānaka is at the moment. ‘‘I know it has grown hugely; talks of a hospital. ‘‘It is quite interesting because apart from the islands it is the furthest from a base hospital of any town in the country. ‘‘It makes it quite complicated because it is quite a big urban area.’’ Over the past five years she had been working near Porirua, Wellington and said her clients were completely different from here in Wānaka. ‘‘It has been very different to Wānaka, 85%-90% of the people I see are Pasifika-Maori. ‘‘It is completely different. ‘‘They often have a high level of physical health need, lots of diabetes and people on dialysis and heart failure.’’ She added there was a real sense of community with those families. ‘‘They have a very good collective health. The old people are cared for at home; the disabled kids are all at home. ‘‘It is quite an amazing experience, very family orientated.’’ Having worked with marginalised communities, such as patients who were homeless or had a drug addiction, Dr O’Hagan had learned how important it was to appreciate a person’s story and not just their ailment. Being a general practitioner for over 30 years, she has worked in a huge range of contexts: rural tourist town, shearing gang clinics, urban iwi-run services and free clinics for the homeless. She is also a well-known GP writer, speaker and performer who has written plays, given addresses and performances at conferences and written a monthly column for New Zealand Doctor since 2017. ‘‘Doctors are sitting with very big stories, some of it is transactional — they just want the blood-pressure pills and a checkup and they are out the door — but that’s unusual.’’ She will be part of the ‘‘Healthcare in Crisis’’ kōrero in the festival on Sunday, March 29, alongside fellow health experts Rob Campbell and Boyd Swinburn, discussing the critical condition of our healthcare system.