Bob Edlin: Health NZ wants hospital staff to be savvy about the Treaty......

Surgical equipment should be well sterilised, but Health NZ wants hospital staff to be savvy about the Treaty, too

A post on Breaking Views steered PoO to this further exposure of the Luxon Government’s failure to root out racism in the deliverance of health services.

Headlined Hospital Says Maori Patients The Most Important In New Job Description, it highlighted a broadcast on The Platform by Michael Laws:

You want Institutional racism? On The Platform Michael Laws says Whanganui Hospital’s Job Description is full of it.

PoO checked out what Laws had said and quickly found the pitch for a sterile services technician to work at the Whanganui hospital.

We further learned that a sterile services technician (or sterile processing technician) is a vital healthcare professional responsible for decontaminating, inspecting, assembling and sterilising surgical instruments and medical devices.

These people are the backbone of infection control, ensuring every tool used in operations and procedures is completely safe and fully functional.

What does the job entail?

• Decontamination: Safely breaking down and washing used surgical equipment using automated washer-disinfectors and ultrasonic cleaners.
• Inspection & Assembly: Meticulously checking each instrument for damage, debris, or wear, and organizing them into exact procedural trays.
• Packaging: Wrapping and sealing instrument trays and single-use items in specialized sterilization pouches.
• Sterilization: Operating heavy-duty equipment like autoclaves (steam sterilizers) and low-temperature sterilizers (for heat-sensitive devices).
• Inventory & Distribution: Using specialized computer tracking systems to catalog sterilized items, ensuring the right kits are ready and delivered to operating theatres and hospital wards when needed.

The successful applicant in Whanganui will

… provide a quality sterilization service to staff, patients/clients and their
Whanau which meets professional standards, legislative requirements
Health New Zealand /Te Whatu Ora Policy

And

… must be able to demonstrate that you are registered with the New
Zealand Sterile Sciences Association (if level four qualified) and that your
scope of practice enables you to undertake the duties of this position.

But a CV attesting to an applicant’s excellence as a sterile services technician is no guarantee of a job with Health New Zealand.

Formidable ideological hurdles must be jumped.

These are set out in a document headed Position Profile | Te Whakatūranga ō Mahi.

First, the Treaty of Waitangi.

Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora – Whanganui is committed to honouring our
obligations and responsibilities under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The following principles provide the guidance for how we set out to
achieve Māori health improvement and equity.

This means the successful applicant not only must be able to demonstrate “an understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, but also be “committed to Te Tiriti O Waitangi principles” – and

• are committed to delivering effective and equitable healthcare to support Māori individuals and their whānau to meet their needs and aspirations.

• are committed to working in partnership and supporting initiatives that meet the health needs and aspirations of Māori individuals and whānau.

• will have insights into your own cultural awareness and an understanding of how your socialcultural influences inform biases that impact on your interactions with Māori, individuals, whānau, and colleagues.

• will ensure that where there is an inherent power imbalance it is not exacerbated by overlaying your own cultural values and practices on Māori, individuals, whānau, and colleagues.

Wow. We had not appreciated there is much more to ensuring surgical sterility than technical prowess with the sterilising equipment.

But wait. There’s more.

Health NZ/Te Whatu Ora – Whanganui is also committed to whānau ora “as a fundamental philosophy for creating strong, healthy and empowered whānau”.

This means:

We ensure our health care and approaches place people and their whānau at the centre of everything we do with and for them.

The successful applicant therefore must:

• be able to articulate whānau ora in practice, specific to your position;

• can demonstrate an understanding and awareness of Māori culture, practices and protocols; have the ability to incorporate Māori models of health, values-based patient and whānau-centred models of care, and mātauranga Māori (Māori Knowledge) to support empowerment and health outcomes for individuals and whānau.

PoO recalls a time when Health NZ said it would stop using an equity adjustor tool that prioritised ethnicity as one of five factors in non-urgent surgical waitlists after a review found it was “legally and ethically justifiable” but didn’t follow “best practice”.

The decision to stop using it was supported by Health Minister Shane Reti at the time.

“As I made clear last year, clinical decisions should be made on the basis of health need first,” Reti told RNZ.

“I supported the decision to review the tool and am aware of the findings. This government will continue to drive better outcomes for communities with high health needs by improving our overall health system.”

An expert panel, chaired by Professor Rod Jackson, had been set up a year earlier to investigate the equity adjustor tool after a Newstalk ZB article triggered a heated political debate at Parliament.

It centred on an algorithm first introduced in Auckland – and later modified – to decide the order in which people receive non-urgent surgery.

In the face of a growing public and political backlash, then-Prime Minister Chris Hipkins instructed his Health Minister, Ayesha Verrall to investigate, and in the meantime halt any further rollout of the tool while a review was conducted.

A change of government brought the prospect of an end to Treaty-based co-governance, partnership and iwi privileges.

But discriminatory policies designed to favor Maori in health and other public services are far from being eradicated.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.