November 30, 2022
Names making a difference in tamariki ora
The winner of an award for training doctors says a multitude of improvements are needed to improve health equity – starting with getting people’s names right.
Dr Te Aro Moxon, a Waikato Hospital paediatrician and senior lecturer at the University of Auckland school of medicine, has won Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand Waikato’s Excellence in Clinical Equity Teaching – Te Tohu Hiranga Award.
He says the award shows increased recognition of the importance of equity within healthcare.
That means appropriate teaching for clinicians coming through, getting more Maori into the health workforce, including at senior levels, and building up the cultural competence of everyone in the sector.
His research found Maori children were more likely to have their names mispronounced.
“That is associated with negative feelings for children, and it is associated with positive feelings when their names are pronounces correctly so in our department we’ve put a focus on the pronunciation of Maori words in general and specifically names and we’ve shown we have been able to improve the confidence of doctors in pronouncing Maori names and I know anecdotally we’ve seen whanau much happier that small but important negative impact has been reduced,” Dr Moxon says.