As a Medic, you will be posted to a Defence Health Centre where you will assist with daily duties including treating personnel with illness or injury, medical administration, minor surgery and medical cover for base emergencies. RNZAF defence health centres have personnel on standby for all military flights, both leaving and arriving on base or flying in the local area. These flights can occur any time of the day and at times you may be on call after hours to provide assistance if necessary. Medics are also involved in the provision of search and rescue operations and you may be required to provide on call and after hours support.

RNZAF units continually train for military operations, not only on base, but also in field environments. Medical support is required for field exercises such as deployed flying exercises, parachuting, survival training, weapon range activities, and recruit training. A medic will attend most field activities and provide emergency medical care in the event of an incident (on the ground or in the air) and treat any illness or injury that may occur. Medics will often find themselves in situations where they are the only health care provider readily available, and therefore you will have training in emergency medicine. This starts with basic first aid but will extend through to areas including advanced cardiac life support, advanced airway management, advanced trauma life support, and intravenous fluid therapy.

All RNZAF personnel have some first aid training. As you gain medical knowledge and experience, you will be involved in delivering this training, including CPR, first aid courses, advanced first aid for treating combat casualties, and training people who are preparing for overseas deployments.

The focus for a Medic on operational duties is the maintenance of optimum health amongst deployed personnel, and provision of emergency care to deployed personnel and to the local populace as required.

You will perform duties such as daily medical consultations and treatment, checking hygiene standards, and environmental health control and prevention. You may get the opportunity to be part of forward Aeromedical Evacuation team.

You may also be involved in humanitarian aid following cyclones or tsunamis in places such as Samoa and Indonesia, or the Aeromedical Evacuation of personnel from abroad back to New Zealand.

The NZDF is pleased to be partnering with Auckland University of Technology (AUT) to deliver training to our medics. This will see them completing a Level 6 Diploma in Paramedic Science and a Level 7 Graduate Certificate in Health Science. 

These qualifications will be achieved through the completion of the Medic initial Training course at the Defence Health School. After graduation from Defence Health School, there is potential to continue part-time extramural clinical education with AUT towards a Bachelor of Health Science in Paramedicine.