Two Pacific nursing students are the recipients of this year’s Pegasus Health Pacific Health Scholarships.
The Christchurch-based general practice group – which represents 228 GP teams - has awarded grants to promising young Pacific health students since 2001 in a bid to encourage more to look towards health professions as career choices.
Pacific people make up 7% of our population – yet only 1.5% of our GPs identify as being of Pacific descent,” says Christchurch GP and Chair of the Pegasus Health Pacific Reference Group, Dr Api Talemaitoga.
“The figures for nurses and allied professionals would be similar – and it’s an issue right across the health sector.”
“There are lots of barriers to people accessing health care, but having the option of seeing someone of the same culture can sometimes mean the difference between visiting a health professional and not.”
“When they do see a health professional, some people will respond quite differently to a person of the same culture than they would somebody from another culture. I know that in my practice there are patients who will tell me things they wouldn’t otherwise disclose because they know I am Pacific.”
Dr Talemaitoga says that being sensitive to individual cultural barriers can make all the difference.
“We ran a ‘buddy’ programme recently to try and encourage Pacific women to undergo cervical screening – friends made appointment for women to get screened and attended the appointments too. It made all the difference to have that support.”
Tagaloa Su’a, Manager of Tangata Atumotu Trust, agrees.
The trust is one of a number of Pacific providers in Christchurch delivering mobile nursing and health promotion services to Pacific people. It is an accessible and culturally effective service set up to address barriers to accessing health care.
“The service began because of the huge demand for Samoan nurses to provide free care to sick people in the community after they’d finished working their ‘day jobs’ in hospitals. The project started out as the Samoan Nurse Association, but soon went pan-Pacific.”
Tagaloa says while there is clear demand for Pacific health workers across the board, supply remains light.
“There are shortages right throughout the sector – we need nurses, doctors, occupational therapists, physios, counsellors, the whole lot.”
“What Pegasus is doing is fantastic – they are taking a very responsible attitude towards the problem, and initiatives like the scholarships and Pegasus’ wider Pacific initiatives really do help.”
“As well as helping financially, the scholarships make young people aware that they have a choice. They begin to see that a career in health is an option.”
