The Goodfellow Unit was set up in 1978 to provide continuing medical education and is part of the School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, at the University of Auckland.
In 2018, Dr Bruce Goodfellow and Professor Bruce Arroll met with Professor Linda Bryder to discuss launching a history of the Goodfellow Unit to commemorate its 40th anniversary. Linda appointed Dr Cheryl Ware to conduct the history as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with her supervision. This online history is the result.
In producing this history, we are grateful for the support we received from many current and former staff members of the Goodfellow Unit, and others associated with the Department of General Practice. Bruce Arroll, Felicity Goodyear-Smith, and Paul Keogh offered access to photographs, videotapes, and other relevant documents from the Goodfellow Unit, Nikki Turner shared photographs and documents from the history of IMAC, and Derek Dow contributed photographs from the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences History. Campbell Maclaurin, Dennis Kerins, and Lilian and Rowena West provided access to photographs and personal correspondence in their private collections.
Many people generously shared their time by participating in oral history interviews. You can listen to selected extracts from the sound clips on this website. Copies of the interviews and abstracts are being deposited with Special Collections at the University of Auckland General Library. In addition to tracing the history of the Goodfellow Unit, the interviews offer insights into the development of continuing medical education, training opportunities for nurses and GPs, and how primary health care workers responded to changing government priorities and funding possibilities.
The testimonies and photographs that feature in this website offer a chance to engage with the experiences and memories of some of those who have been instrumental to the development of this important Unit over the last four decades.
Dr Cheryl Ware and Professor Linda Bryder
Discipline of History, School of Humanities
Former Goodfellow Unit promotional video: