Nursing practices ‘offensive’

Press, 7 September 1984, Page 5

Nursing practices ‘offensive’

PA Auckland Some of the worst examples of cultural insensitivity to Maori attitudes to health occur in hospitals, says a Maori psychiatrist, Dr Mason Durie.

Dr Durie, director of psychiatry at Palmerston North Hospital, giving the Dean’s lecture at the Auckland Medical School, said that Maori confidence in professional health care was greatly undermined by hospital design and nursing

practices which were offensive to Maori ideas of hygiene. As a result, many Maori patients believed doctors, and nurses were “totally ignorant” of hygiene rules. Having food anywhere near places where washing or other bodily functions were performed was foreign to Maori culture, he said. Yet hospitals routinely placed a washing bowl, urinal, food tray and Gideon Bible all on a bedside locker; a confusion of uses

probably not found anywhere else to the same extent, Dr Durie said. Similar problems arose in modern houses which had toilets in the bathroom or the laundry very close to the kitchen. Maori elders were still regarded as the authorities on health matters in many Maori communities, Dr Durie said. The two issues that were of greatest concern to them were those of “cultural pollution” and the care of

children, said Dr Durie. Recent Waitangi Tribunal hearings in several parts of the country showed clearly that the Maori people saw the pollution of food sources as a serious threat to their cultural well-being as well as physical health.

The introduction of the idea of cultural pollution highlighted a very important principle of Maori health as not merely the prevention Of illness, but as a state of total well-being.