Cultural safety and the medical profession in Aotearoa New Zealand: a training framework and the pursuit of Māori health equity.

Abstract

The concept of cultural safety, developed in the training of nurses over 30 years ago, was adopted by the Medical Council of New Zealand in 2019. We report on the journey of the Medical Council of New Zealand, Te ORA (the Māori Medical Practitioners Association) and the Council of Medical Colleges, and our increasing understanding of cultural competence and cultural safety in promoting best outcomes for Māori patients over the years. We describe in detail the key components of a cultural safety training framework as a tool for medical colleges' training of registrars and the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of specialist medical practitioners. Finally, we discuss pathways forwards for cultural competence and cultural safety training that apply to a society with diverse cultural needs, noting that such training has been proposed as significant in shifting "difficult to change" Māori health inequities.