An article from Media Watch, compiled and annotated by Barry R. Ashpole (Ontario, Canada). More reports can be found at IPCRC.NET
NEW ZEALAND | New Zealand Radio News – 9 June 2015 – Some academics are calling for more rigourous training to ensure Māori receive better care at the end of their lives. They say the current palliative care system does not do enough to cater to the cultural needs of Māori. University of Auckland Professor Merryn Gott and her colleague Tess Moeke-Maxwell have spent the past five years researching end-of-life care for Māori and how it could be improved. Professor Gott said, when it came to palliative care in Aotearoa, a one-size-fits-all approach was not effective. She said the current hospice model was based on Western culture. “There’s actually a philosophy that underpins [it] and it’s quite a Western philosophy about what good death looks like. Certainly there are some dissonances between that and what Māori would want for themselves at the end of life,” she said. “So I think there’s a real need to understand the different, culturally nuanced needs of Māori at the end of life and to look at how services could be optimised to support those.” Ms. Gott said Māori have special tikanga, or customs, around death that Western cultures do not understand because they don’t have them themselves…read more