New Year Honours: Irihapeti Ramsden

By ANGELA GREGORY

A Maori health educator known for pushing through compulsory cultural safety and Treaty of Waitangi issues in nursing studies regards her award as a sign of a maturing culture.

Dr Irihapeti Merenia Ramsden, of Ngai Tahu and Rangitane, has been made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her outstanding contribution to nursing and education.

Dr Ramsden, of Wellington, said her award indicated New Zealand was maturing as a country.

"It is accepting we are looking at ourselves very carefully."

Dr Ramsden, a registered general and obstetric nurse with a PhD in nursing education, said cultural safety courses aimed to increase nurses' empathy with patients in a non-judgmental way.

"In New Zealand it is really essential to teach colonial history so people can understand what they see in front of them ... they're not going to get that information anywhere else in their education."

Dr Ramsden said cultural safety also included other power relationships between nurses and patients, and examined a range of cultures.

Raising students' awareness of their particular prejudices or discomfort might help them make better career choices, she said.

"It is not about making them feel guilt or blame, but they have to know how to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses."

Cultural safety was included in the official nursing curriculum in 1992 and proved at times controversial after some students baulked at it.

Dr Ramsden has also actively participated in the development of Maori health though her association with the New Zealand Council of Maori Nurses, and is a fellow of the College of Nurses. She is the author of the report Cultural Safety in Nursing Education in Aotearoa 1990.

The 56-year-old plans to write a book on the subject this year with a post-doctoral fellowship from the Health Research Council.

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