Whakaaro

Last week we joined ACEM’s Manaaki Mana Kaikōkiri Hui in Rotorua, first supporting the organising rōpū to connect and align, then listening and learning alongside kaikōkiri from across the motu. A powerful reminder that meaningful change in healthcare happens step by step, through many people choosing to do things differently.

Cultural Wellbeing retreats are built around four pou: environment, safety, interconnectedness and integration. Together, they create the conditions for deeper learning, meaningful connection and practical change that can contribute to greater health equity for Māori.

As an Australian living in Te Tai Tokerau, I often sit with the discomfort of how much I still have to learn. Meeting Mereana Pou changed that discomfort into responsibility. Her teaching helped me understand the ongoing impacts of colonisation and strengthened my resolve to be part of the solution. I am not being asked to be Māori, only to keep learning, act with respect and do my best. That is the spirit we bring to every Cultural Wellbeing retreat.

Cultural conversations towards system change need to move through every specialty, every setting, and therefore every patient interaction. It sits both at the bedside and in the boardroom. It needs to be as present in a policy meeting at Health NZ as it is in a rural emergency department at 2am. This isn't a training! It's a contribution towards system change, and system change must move through the whole ecosystem.

This is not a tick-box exercise. It is an invitation to reconnect health, culture and care. In this reflection, we explore what healthcare may have forgotten: that wellbeing is not held in isolation, but through relationship, belonging, whenua, whakapapa, wairua and whānau. For clinicians, this is an invitation to move beyond “learning culture” and toward more meaningful connection with Māori patients and whānau.

Our health system is under pressure, and Māori patients continue to experience inequity and under-service. At the heart of Cultural Wellbeing Retreats is the belief that healing begins when we slow down, listen deeply, and learn differently. Te ao Māori reminds us that health is relational, cultural, spiritual, environmental and collective. This kaupapa invites clinicians into restorative, whole-person learning, where connection, reflection and whanaungatanga support real cha

Doctors are trained to notice patterns: a change in breathing, an abnormal result, a risk factor revealed in a history, or a symptom that does not fit the most obvious explanation. Yet there are dimensions of care medical training has not always prepared clinicians to see clearly: the weight of history, the role of whānau, the relationship between health and whenua, and the fact that trust in the room can never be assumed.

The life expectancy gap between Māori and the general population remains 6.4 years. Research points consistently to the clinical encounter itself — what happens, and what doesn't happen, in the room. Cultural safety is no longer a nice-to-have. The question is how you develop it in a way that actually changes something.