About Keja Health
Finding your feet should not depend on who
happens to be in the room.
Keja Health helps doctors in Aotearoa New Zealand build the skills that complement their clinical training: the real, everyday side of practice that medicine is delivered through. We want doctors to feel prepared for and confident in their practice, not left to work the rest out alone.
Why we're here
We don't accept that a difficult stretch in a career is just a rite of passage to be survived, or that finding your feet should come down to luck.
Training rightly puts clinical care first, and it has less room for everything else the job asks: how the system fits together, where responsibility sits, and how to practise well within real constraints. Most doctors pick this up on the job, alone, and the hard way. That is where good doctors lose confidence, second-guess themselves, or burn out early, at the point in a career when they have the most to give.
The knowledge is there. It just passes by luck of who is on hand rather than by design. The people best placed to change that are the clinicians who have already been through it, so Keja turns their hard-won experience into practical learning, specific to Aotearoa New Zealand and grounded in how the system runs here. We've started with the step up to consultant, where the gap is sharpest, and we're building from there.
The knowledge is there. It just passes by luck of who is on hand rather than by design. The people best placed to change that are the clinicians who have already been through it, so Keja turns their hard-won experience into practical learning, specific to Aotearoa New Zealand and grounded in how the system runs here. We've started with the step up to consultant, where the gap is sharpest, and we're building from there.
Where Keja Health started
Keja Health was founded by Kevin Chen, a New Zealand-trained physician dual-trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He trained in Christchurch, including through the years of the Canterbury earthquakes, and completed his specialty training in the Bay of Plenty.
Much of his early consultant practice fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he stepped into a specialist-scale role with guidance changing week to week. The medicine was the familiar part. What he hadn't been prepared for was everything else the role turned out to be: the accountability that now stopped with him, and a job far larger than the clinical work.
What settled him in those early years was the people around him. He found his footing among the consultants he worked alongside and, a few years in, began helping newer ones find theirs. An old supervisor had once told him it would click when he found his tribe, and that was the moment it did.
Looking back, what he'd needed was simple: a way to think through the transition before he was in the middle of it. Nothing like that existed, so he built Keja Health for the doctors making the same move after him.
Much of his early consultant practice fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he stepped into a specialist-scale role with guidance changing week to week. The medicine was the familiar part. What he hadn't been prepared for was everything else the role turned out to be: the accountability that now stopped with him, and a job far larger than the clinical work.
What settled him in those early years was the people around him. He found his footing among the consultants he worked alongside and, a few years in, began helping newer ones find theirs. An old supervisor had once told him it would click when he found his tribe, and that was the moment it did.
Looking back, what he'd needed was simple: a way to think through the transition before he was in the middle of it. Nothing like that existed, so he built Keja Health for the doctors making the same move after him.
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Our mission and values
Our mission is to prepare doctors for the whole role their clinical expertise has to operate within: the responsibilities, systems, judgement and relationships that shape day-to-day practice, so they step into what's next prepared and confident, and no one has to find their feet alone.
These are the values that shape everything we do:
These are the values that shape everything we do:
The everyday side of practice, made clear
The parts of the job training has less room for: the everyday realities rather than theory, starting with how the system actually works.
Specific to the NZ health system
How medicine is really practised in Aotearoa and where a doctor fits within it, including the realities and frameworks that shape practice here: resource constraints, ACC, Te Tiriti, the Code of Rights and MCNZ accountability.
Ready for the whole role
The responsibilities doctors say they were least prepared for, especially when the role itself changes: stepping up, moving settings or entering an unfamiliar health system.
Part of your tribe
No doctor should face the hardest parts alone. Keja Health becomes part of your tribe, carrying the lessons of the clinicians who came before you.
The people behind Keja Health
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Kevin Chen
Managing Director
Kevin is a New Zealand-trained physician, dual-trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He qualified MBChB from the University of Otago and trained in Christchurch, including through the years of the Canterbury earthquakes, before moving to the Bay of Plenty, where he completed his specialty training and practised as a consultant physician. For a period he was the region's main point of infectious diseases cover, much of it during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Supporting other doctors has been the thread through his career. He began teaching as a registrar, coordinating the exam-preparation programme for physicians sitting their RACP examinations, and later helped organise the College's divisional clinical examinations. That commitment to helping others find their footing is the foundation of Keja Health.
Qualifications
Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, 2022
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, 2011
Supporting other doctors has been the thread through his career. He began teaching as a registrar, coordinating the exam-preparation programme for physicians sitting their RACP examinations, and later helped organise the College's divisional clinical examinations. That commitment to helping others find their footing is the foundation of Keja Health.
Qualifications
Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, 2022
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, 2011
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Our Clinical Advisory Board
Every Keja Health course is reviewed by our Clinical Advisory Board before it's published: three senior clinicians and a specialist in adult education, checking both that it's clinically accurate and that the course actually teaches.
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Dr Michelle Downie
Dr Michelle Downie is a General Physician and Endocrinologist and the Associate Chief Medical Officer for Hauora a Toi Bay of Plenty, where she has previously been Medical Director and a Head of Department. Before moving to Tauranga in 2022 she held a senior medical leadership role at Southland Hospital, having earlier worked in Dunedin and Wellington. She is the current president of IMSANZ (Internal Medicine Society of Australia and New Zealand) and has served on RACP committees for fifteen years, including chairing the New Zealand Advanced Training Committee for General and Acute Care Medicine. She now writes and oversees questions for the RACP physicians' examination as Deputy Chair of the Item Writing Panel.
Dr Orna McGinn
Dr Orna McGinn is a Specialist GP with more than two decades of clinical, leadership and education experience in New Zealand and the UK. She is Founder and Chair of New Zealand Women in Medicine and Clinical Director of the Primary Health Initiative. Orna works at the intersection of clinical care, workforce development and policy, with a strong focus on primary care and women's health. She brings a collaborative, systems-thinking approach to shaping a more equitable, sustainable future for health in Aotearoa.
Dr Diane Hanfelt-Goade
Dr Diane Hanfelt-Goade trained in medicine and infectious diseases at the University of New Mexico, where she led clinics, consulted on the inpatient services and ran a research lab, with an emphasis on virology and emerging diseases. Teaching and mentoring ran through her career, and she retired as a tenured Associate Professor of Medicine in 2012. She moved to Aotearoa in 2014, continuing in infectious diseases and internal medicine and completing her FRACP, before retiring in March 2025.
Dr Jane Ewens
Dr Jane Ewens (PhD) is an education specialist with significant experience in adult education. She has developed and delivered qualifications and professional learning, particularly for teachers, and has worked extensively in educational leadership and policy. Jane specialises in applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to create courses and programmes that are fit for purpose and designed with the audience in mind. She brings this expertise to Keja Health's course developers, drawing on senior leadership roles across tertiary education, early childhood education and the public sector.
Our Mission
To prepare doctors for the whole role their clinical expertise has to operate within: the responsibilities, systems, judgement and relationships that shape day-to-day practice, so they step into what's next prepared and confident, and no one has to find their feet alone.
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