In addition, some of the public hospitals have burn units which are staffed by plastic surgeons. Outpatient clinics are usually held once or twice weekly in university affiliated hospitals. Private practice occupies a varying amount of time and is mostly carried out in private hospitals although some private work is done in some public hospitals, usually this is not of an aesthetic nature. Patients are usually admitted in order of medical necessity and often the registrar or trainee is responsible for much of the surgery under the supervision of a qualified plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Private Hospital insurance is available in both Australia and New Zealand.
Private hospitals are usually government subsidised in both countries.
Patients are referred to the plastic surgeon by general practitioners and the surgeon acts as a consultant, being responsible for reports on the patient's treatment to the general practitioner who has referred the patient. Undergraduate and postgraduate training is carried out in a university teaching hospital and plastic surgeons are usually responsible for undergraduate teaching of maxillofacial trauma, hand surgery, wound care, burns and general plastic surgery conditions and sometimes for skin tumours. Present day practice involves the sharing of some areas of work, such as hand surgery, with general surgeons, hand surgeons and orthopaedic surgeons and cleft lip and palate with paediatric surgeons. Research grants are possible from Federal and State Governments as well as the College of Surgeons and from the private area. Up until more recent times there has been no full time professorial appointments in Plastic Surgery in Australia, however recently Wayne Morris of Melbourne has been appointed the Professor of Surgery at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, the first full time academic chair for a plastic surgeon in Australia.