July 14, 2022
More needed for Māori nurses
A nursing educator would like to see cultural skills recognised in nurses’ pay packets.
Josephine Davis from the University of Auckland says efforts to lift the number of Māori nurses is must overcome obstacles to training, such as that prospective nurses may have to leave whānau to study elsewhere, give up paid work that is essential for their families or even deal with the problems of learning how to look at tertiary level after leaving school early.
If they want to work in kaupapa Māori settings, they will find the pay is lower than working for mainstream organisations, even if they have additional skills.
“We are seeing more and more of our, particularly our young, Māori nurses coming through where te reo is their first language, and I think that’s something we really need to encourage, but as a nursing sector we need to catch up on how we recompense people for all that cultural stuff they bring as being part of who they are,” Ms Davis says.
She hopes reform of nursing education under the new skills body Te Pukenga will help, as it includes a stream for Māori nursing training.