Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
Category 6: Ethnic minorities
King (2001:10) indicated that it is expected of all Primary Health
Organisations to provide services for Mäori and Pacific people in
ways that are culturally competent and effective. In most countries
in the world it is now expected of nurses to deliver care in a
culturally competent and effective manner. The Nursing and
Midwifery Council in the UK recently asked nursing departments to
review their curricula to ensure that they produce nurses who are
culturally sensitive (NA., 2004:7). To was already preceded by a
research project on the extent to which undergraduate preregistration
programmes were preparing the future graduates to
deliver culturally sensitive care in the fields of Adult Nursing, Mental
Health Nursing and Midwifery (Gerrish, 1998:115).
The Department already reacted to the needs of their multi-cultural
student population by developing a Graduate Profile instead of a
Philosophy for the Department. One of the Stakeholders actually
indicated, that the health model used in the curriculum based on
the Mäori Model of Health. “And we have based our framework on
the Mäori model of health, which is a foundation. It is about a
house, and the foundation is the community and we have got to
continue of care and the work is the strategy that we work under”
(Participant 2: 245-250).
It is also important to remember, that students from minority
groups would like to associate with lecturing staff from that same
cultural background. This factor has been clearly described by Mills-
Wisneski (2005:49) who indicated that “Minority faculty are a key to
retention and change of workforce. The presence of minority
faculty provide an opportunity for minority students to observe such
faculty members in leadership roles, in the clinical area, and in
other related university and community roles.” To this effect, one
of the stakeholders indicated that “I think so, I think it does. It will
change as the political climate settles, if it ever will. It is always
going to be a changing thing. It will change in terms of how nursing
sees it’s role, it will change in terms of how government strategy
and it will change in terms of how Maori go socially and
economically. I think in terms of these stakeholders, internally our
Tanga Te Whenua have become a member and have been newly
appointed as a Kaiawhina Been co-opted. Certainly if they weren’t
involved enough in things like community development” (Participant
5: 146-157). The Department already made specific provision to
support the Students from ethnic minority groups. “The department
had already got a Kaiawhina which was on their advisory group, to
the Degree development. So that was already in place when I came
on board as a stake holder. The development process was very
good” (P9: 25-30). This participant also had an idea for increasing
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