Its statement on Maori health and wellbeing is a case in point. It claims:
"Historical and ongoing colonisation means that Māori are prevented from accessing resources that promote good health and experience much higher exposure to health harms compared to non-Māori."
Brown has faced a barrage of criticism, mostly claiming that cultural competency is a necessary professional requirement and not the ideological project he is accused of opposing. But Brown's criticism of the Medical Council was not directed at its focus on cultural competency at all. It was directed at the Council's reliance on vague, ideological and politically charged concepts such as "ongoing colonisation."
A professional regulatory body undermines its own credibility when it makes sweeping assertions without clearly defining its terms or providing evidence. What exactly is ‘ongoing colonisation’? In what way are all Maori people prevented from accessing resources that promote good health? Which resources and who or what is preventing access?
The Council’s claim is also not credible. The Council does not attribute this inability to access resources to some Maori. It specifically attributes this to ‘Maori’, which can only mean it believes all Maori people are handicapped in this way. There are nearly one million Maori people in New Zealand. Where is the evidence that such a large proportion of the population is unable to function at such a level as to be able to access health resources that promote good?
If the claim cannot be substantiated, as I suspect it can’t, it has no place in the standards of a professional medical regulator. The Medical Council should be focused on promoting high-quality healthcare, not advancing ideological narratives through broad, undefined and dubious political statements.
The problem is not that the Medical Council believes this nonsense, it is the fact that they are making it a requirement that doctors believe it too.
It will be a requirement for doctors “to develop and maintain knowledge and insight into how colonial histories, institutional structures and everyday medical practices shape health outcomes for Māori.”
Any doctor when faced with a smart, articulate, educated Maori patient who takes their health seriously, which is not unusual I would think, could be forgiven for wondering why it is that the Maori before them is not like the Medical Councils’ mythical Maori; oppressed, unable to read health pamphlets and take responsibility for their own health. A doctor might even conclude themselves that colonisaton has brought benefits to Maori in terms of health outcomes; advanced medicines, vaccinations etc have brought life expectancy gains since colonisation for Maori that are greater than that of non Maori, but should they do that they will be out of step with the Medical Council and presumably exposed to its wrath.
Most professional bodies tell their members what they must do: The Medical Council tells doctors what they must think.
It also tells them what they must understand. Doctors are told that they must “understand the inherent indigenous rights that Māori hold, as tangata whenua, to health, self determination and equity”.
What these special rights that Maori people have it does not say. If the Medical Council believes that Maori people have rights to health that non Maori patients don’t have it should list them. How is a doctor to be sure they have satisfied the Medical Councils requirements of understanding, and one presumes providing their Maori patients these special rights, when they don’t know what they are?
As well as providing professional level care to each of their patients the Medical Council tells doctors they are “professionally responsible for taking meaningful action to advance health equity for Māori”.
So now doctors must not only provide and monitor professional care for each patient but also a specific ethnic group of patients so that they can somehow advance health equity for Maori. Doctors should be professionally required to provide equitable care to all patients no matter their ethnicity and a Medical Council that believes one ethnicity is more deserving than another should be closed down.
As if complying with vague ideological drivel from the Medical Council is not hard enough, the greatest challenge for doctors is to comply with the Medical Council’s requirement for them to not stereotype Maori people while stereotyping them.
Doctors are told to “avoid cultural stereotypes and assumptions” Yet the entire framework requires doctors to begin by viewing patients through the lens of their Maori ethnicity. Before the patient has spoken a word, the doctor is expected to understand them as a member of a group shaped by historical and ongoing colonisation, inequity, power imbalances, disadvantage, and institutional barriers. They are also to assume one presumes that the Maori patient before them has been unable to access resources that promote good health because of ongoing colonisation and therefore does not know how to live a healthy life.
Cultural competency is a legitimate professional requirement, and one would expect that when faced with a patient of an obvious cultural group a doctor would respect that. The Medical Council defines cultural competency as “the ability to understand, appreciate, and interact effectively with people form cultures or belief systems different from one’s own” Not scolding an orthodox Jew for not eating pork or requiring a fasting Muslim to take pills that must not be taken on an empty stomach are concrete examples, but what it is about Maori people that in the eyes of the Medical Council make them different to a non Maori doctor and what assumptions a doctor is supposed to make in regard to Maori people, other than they are oppressed by ongoing colonisation and have unnamed special rights, is not detailed. Do Maori people really want to be thought of as different to mainstream New Zealand patients in any case?
The Medical Council has pulled the draft consultation documents after 8500 submissions were received. This is an unusually high number for a professional standards consultation. The submitters who were opposed who included doctors themselves, were concerned that it was too ideological, not clinically grounded, risked stereotyping patients, too vague, and promoted unfairness between patients. The draft document was an ideological shocker, laced with racist undertones and patronising to the Maori people of New Zealand. The fact that the governing body approved it for release for consultation brings in to question the competency of the entire Council, not just the Chair and Deputy Chair. Simeon Brown was right on the money when he made new Ministerial appointees to the Council to replace them, but he needs to go further because it was not just the Chair and Deputy Chair who approved this shocker of a consultation document for release.
Robin Grieve, a tutor, orchardist and retired farmer, is Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research HERE.
9 comments:
This article should be sent to Dr Ken Clark....now NZMC Chairman!!
The whole debacle was a disgrace to our profession.
As to the wokester Drs complaining to Brown of the firing of the previous chairman and deputy...pffft!
All will be well dr Betty to the rescue
Brown sticking his snivelly nose in with his dog whistling right-wing ideology. Politicians need to stay out of medicine. Ridiculous.
The fastest way to fix this is to allow a new body to form with similar powers.
Additionally there should be no "union" style body that is the gate keeper of a profession, they will work for their members when they purport to represent the interests of the population.
Think of real estate institute or teachers simple take the registration power from them and let them establish whatever union they prefer. Remember these groups were originally lobbies for rent seeking but have turned into monopoly lobby groups running up and down an unholy alliance.
Robin: I fully agree with everything you have written above. The government has to cancel ALL this neo-Marxist, post-modern, critical theory, bullshit which is infecting our Republic and its institutions.
The magic 4% + or 520th certainly suits some agendas.
Robin - great article.
Here is my experience with the medical council.
I made an appointment with my doctor coming up 2 years back, late july. I was told my appt would be in 6 weeks, the 10th sept. I was not happy but decided to live with it. 6 weeks is a long time. When the 8th sept rolled around i phoned my doctor to confirm my appointment and time. They confirmed. Just 2 hours later, they called me and cancelled my appointment - not giving a reason. They made me 'start again' and scheduled me for late october - another 6 week wait.
It was here I lost my rag. I understand 'things' happen, I'm a business owner myself and consider myself 'agile' and able to adapt to situations. However, if they had told me, 'sorry, we cant do that day, we need to move you a couple of days out', I would understand. But to make me start again and wait 'another 6 weeks' and a total of over 3 months - is unacceptable. I phoned my doctors office repeatedly for an explanation and to try and move my appointment forward. They would not budge. The manager never ever called me back after I left 6 messages requesting to speak to her. I even went in - but to no avail. I then tried to change doctors, no doctor would take me - as I already have a doctor......apparently.
This is when I called the medical council. My dealings with them were just as bad. They initially refused to help. They told me 'thats how it goes'. I was shocked at their response. I spoke to my lawyer who told me that is unacceptable and they need to 'go into bat for me', that what they are there for. When I called back and mentioned I have legal advice, it was only then the medical council agreed that a over 3 month wait was unacceptable and wrote a letter on my behalf to my medical center. They refused to put in the part that I wanted put in that if I were maori that this would have never happened. I have witnessed with my own eyes when waiting for my doctor in previous appointments that maori get appointments the very next week, others have to wait. Although I dont understand each situation, I wanted that part put in to my letter. The medical council refused. They told me there is no race based policies in health, and then I told them that is incorrect as Ardern implemented race based policies and the 'rating system' as an example and the maori health system. Again, the medical council representative went quiet. They refused to put my request into my letter.
They then they sent my letter to the wrong medical center. Another day or two trying to sort these simple tasks out and eventually my letter hit my medical center. The doctors office called me and told me that there was a cancellation and I could see a doctor this week (like they were doing me a favour). I took that appointment and when in the doctors office I told her the story of my experience. I flatly asked her to her face - 'if i were maori and my name was rangi honi, would i have been treated like this'? She said 'no'.
Get rid of the medical council also. Useless waste of tax payer money. Racist like the rest of the far left govt agencies. Health (and everything) should be based on need, not race.
To anon at 8.44am: Ideologists should stay out of medical treatment of New Zealanders. Minister Brown has kept them out, which is why the wokesters are so vocal.
Not only does every Maori have full and equitable access to doctors and the health system, in fact more given the priority remaining from Ardern's He Puapua initiatives.
Plus the taxpayers are also paying some millions of dollars for some witch doctor type woo woo spiritual nonsense accessible only to the right type of Maori.
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