Embracing Cultural Narratives: The Journey of Māori Veterinarians in New Zealand - Dr Jane Jones - Qualitative Research - pt 2

Julie South [00:00:04]:
Maori Tikanga. How respectfully do you hold this aspect of working as a veterinary professional in your hands? When you're at work? Were you even aware that there was such a thing to watch out for? Or do you barge in like the proverbial bull in a china shop? Or perhaps do you reverently tippy toe your way through a conversation? If you want to avoid opening your mouth to change feet or having to dig your way out of a culturally deep and potentially insulting hole, then stay tuned. Because today we're continuing the conversation with Dr. Jane Jones, Companion animal veterinarian, and her qualitative research entitled Experiences of Mori Veterinarians and Veterinary Nurses in the Veterinary Profession in Aotearoa, A narrative inquiry which she's undertaken with Dr. Francesca Brown of Otago Polytech. Welcome to Veterinary Voices. This is episode 214 and I am your host, Julie South. With listeners tuning in from over 1400 cities worldwide, veterinary Voices celebrates all that's great about working in New Zealand's veterinary industry.

Julie South [00:01:24]:
I'd love to hear where you're listening from right now, so please feel free to share your location and you can do that with me at VeterinaryVoices NZ. And it's also at VeterinaryVoices NZ where you can find back copies as well. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by Vet Staff, New Zealand's only recruitment agency specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs that they're excited about going to on Monday mornings in Kiwi vet clinics. And that's vetstaff Co nz. If you haven't heard the first part of this conversation, then please go back and listen to episode 213 to give you a better context and understanding. Because of all the, all the different multi part episodes that I've recorded over the last four or so years, this is probably the one that's most important that you go back and listen to. The link will be in the show notes of where you're listening to right now or you can find find it@VeterinaryVoices NZ. As I said last week, I want to kick off this episode by seeking in advance forgiveness.

Julie South [00:02:37]:
Te reo Mori is not my first language. I'll do my absolute best in public, not insult by mangling my words. So if some of my words sound or feel a bit like fingernails over a blackboard to you, I apologise. It's not my intention for that to happen. It's not my intention to offend or grate and so if that happens, as I said, I apologize in advance. Dr. Jane Jones is a companion animal veterinarian based in Aotahi, Christchurch, Aotearoa, New Zealand. She kicks off our chat today with a little bit about the research and her want for where her contribution might lead to and future.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:03:30]:
Our research is a qualitative narrative inquiry project which interviewed 13 people in the sector. And then we have themed up the research and we're talking to those themes and looking into the literature which relate to those themes. So that's it in a nutshell. It's fairly wide ranging. Sometimes I find that rather daunting. This opened up so many different aspects of Mori and New Zealand society or the veterinary sector or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, we're not going to be able to speak to all of the themes that came out of it, but we're speaking to some of the key ones.

Julie South
And you're not doing this because it's a PhD for you, you're doing this because the opportunity arose, is that correct?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:04:15]:
Some people have said to me this, this should have been a PhD or a master's thesis. And yeah, I guess that would give me more letters after my name. I sometimes, I regret not constantly feel underqualified to do this, but it's just been. I guess I feel like I'm just on this massive learning journey and I want to try and give the research as much respect as I can. And K Papa Mori research is another idea that I've learned a lot about. So Kaupapa Mori research is this idea that it's research by Mori for Mori, with Mori, and there's a lot written on it, on the theory and the practice of it. The key element to understand is that Mori have had a lot of research done on them over the years which has not been for their best outcomes or their benefit. It's been done by, I don't know, curious academics who have wanted to extract information and at the end of the day it's not helping them.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:05:15]:
So I guess at my heart is the idea that eventually this research would be sort of picked up by Mori who are in the sector and there are a lot more Mori, young Mori vets coming through and run with as like more of a, like. Right, we need to get this conversation started. We need to hand over the baton and find the next person to keep driving it. And I'm a person who has been able to give this time and attention and it's my little, little contribution from the sidelines. And as part of my own journey, I guess.

Julie South [00:05:55]:
I kicked off this episode talking about Tikanga. It's here where Jane explains what Tikanga.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:06:05]:
Is the big example that kept coming up was Tikanga around death. We euthanize a lot of animals, we deal with death a lot in the veterinary sector. And death is a very spiritual process for Mori and it's not really interacted with that and like that in our New Zealand European setting. I mean, obviously people understand from a gut perspective that maybe there's a spiritual aspect to it, but we don't allow it to show that it's head in that regard in the veterinary setting. And a lot of the nurses and vets talked about the discomfort of that. They felt like there was things that they wanted to do which would make them or their clients feel safe, that they weren't enabled or didn't feel they could bring to the table to do. And that felt really ill fitting or uncomfortable or uneasy. They were asked to do provide services, but they weren't able to show up as Mori to do those things even if there were Mori clients.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:07:07]:
So even if they had a Mori client come in and there was a setting that needed Tikanga brought to it that they knew, they often might not have known exactly what Tikanga they should bring or how to do it or feel comfortable to bring it, so they were asked to leave their cultural self at the door and to just step into this European or New Zealand European way of practicing.

Julie South [00:07:32]:
Are you able for somebody who's listening right now, who may or may not be Mori, but could have Mori clients, what, and until this point in time was totally oblivious, ignorant that there was this element missing, what could they do? What might they do to bring Tikanga into a euthanasia experience? To show respect without respect, without patronization?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:08:13]:
Okay, well, if they are not Mori, and possibly even if they are, if they're not Mori and they're dealing with a Mori client and I, unfortunately, I'd say this is the same for pkeh hence as well, actually is that the first thing you should do is actually open the question up to the client and say what would make this experience better for you? What would you like to bring to this space? Because if you bring a sort of a karakia, which you've, you know, learned or whatever, and they are a Mori family who don't do that, who just don't feel comfortable with that, all that's going to happen is you'll make the situation even more uncomfortable for them. What we want is for them to be able to express themselves. So that's being culturally safe, is for the client to lead that conversation and then for the Mori staff. I'm not going to tell them what to do, but what I would say is I would love us. Not us, I would love all of us to be able to get together, but particularly the Mori staff in the sector and to start to explore what tikanga they feel would be really important to start to introduce into our sector because we're going to need some new stuff and some old stuff, and that needs kind of working out as a group. There's some tikanga which might not exist yet for the veterinary sector because they didn't used to have a veterinary sector. Right. So it's a relatively new thing for them.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:09:47]:
But death is not a new thing. And how you treat people is not a new thing. And their. Their way, they understand spirituality is not a new thing. So there's. Yeah, it's sort of. It's old and it's new and it needs. It needs exploring.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:10:01]:
And people. It would be so helpful if people could really be able to bring their cultural selves to the space and do what they felt was right with the people that they were serving. It would just make the whole thing a lot less injuring to people's Wairoa.

Julie South [00:10:19]:
You said 13. You had 13 respondents, interviewees. That is such a small percentage of the population. I'm going to make the assumption here that there will be listeners that are in clinics where there is no Mori representation presence, essence whatsoever, except maybe through their clients. If they go to, let's take the euthanasia example, and they follow your suggestion and they ask the client, what would the client like to see, what would.

Julie South [00:11:00]:
The client like to bring?

What answers might they get? Just what I'm after here is to help prepare clinics and individuals to be able to respond appropriately to something that they might come back with. You mentioned a kara kea. Now, New Zealand is officially in the last census, a non Christian country. Karaqiya is prayer as I understand it.

Julie South [00:11:33]:
No.

Okay, so thank you.

Enlighten me.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:11:37]:
Yeah. I'm not sure that I'm going to be the best person to unpack kara kea. But kara kea is blessing. It's a spiritual, you know, thing to do. It's not necessarily prayer to God as such, I would call it. It's much wider than that. And it's so many things. I don't think any staff member should be bringing karakia to that space without actually chatting to some local Kaumatua, local Mori, or actually asking if they would be able to sit down.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:12:16]:
And it's likely that the client would be the one who would bring it. Right. So they don't necessarily need to bring it and do something that makes them feel really uncomfortable, but it's providing enough time. And that's one of the big drawbacks of veterinary practice is that this, what should be like a really sacred spiritual kind of moment that's often deeply sad is squashed into a very short amount of time in a really inappropriate sort of setting. So that's the injurious part, isn't it? So I would be trying to front foot it with the client if you knew that a euthanasia was happening and saying, you are welcome, we're going to provide this space for you. You are welcome to bring what you feel to invite them to do that. And in order for them to feel comfortable to doing that, unfortunately they're going to have needed to feel comfortable previously. You know, and that's another whole conversation really.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:13:13]:
It's about helping people to feel comfortable and culturally safe in your space. And I hope that as a sector we're going to be having these conversations more and more as we grow, build our awareness of the fact that for a lot of people it's not a comfortable space, they don't actually feel welcome and they're not able to show up as themselves and state what their priorities are.

Julie South [00:13:41]:
Yeah, I think as a species humans are, have disconnected the brain from the heart from the spirit. This whole body, mind, spirit is now fragmented. And that was why I mentioned prayer, because I don't actually listening to this. And I guess this is where your quantitative, qualitative aspect comes in because you can't just look at New Zealand as now not a Christian. And I say Christian because that's how it was defined in the census. But let's take Christian out and make it spiritual. We just, the majority of us, I think, don't know how to be spiritual. And Mori are very much spiritual.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:14:37]:
Yeah. And I think that's another one of the big themes that came out was this disconnect between the values of the people that we talk to and sometimes and the, and the sector that the workspace they found themselves in. So mori values, you know, some of the key values which we think about are kaitiakitanga, you know, caring for things, Wairoatanga, you know, the spiritual aspect, the Manaakitanga, looking after people, Whaka, whnaungatanga, like building relationships, building whnau connections. And often the recipients felt that they couldn't enact the values which they held dearly within the context of the veterinary clinics or the Veterinary sector. So there was a disconnect in terms of their models of health as well. I don't know if you've ever heard of the model of health. Te whare tapaf, which is in human medicine, was developed by a Mason jury. It was a while ago now and it's been.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:15:41]:
Lots of different models have come out of it, but it's a different way of thinking about health because we focus on the physical health, but then there's the emotional health and then there's the mental health and then there's the spiritual health and there's the health of the whnau and all of those things. It's sort of the image of te whare tapu whara as a building where all sides of the building are well supported to give a solid structure. And that's a sort of a model of health. So in terms of. Not many of the recipients talked about necessarily te whare tapa wh. But what they talked about was having that balance in terms of a more holistic approach to health. They talked about, you know, the connection and the care for the environment or maybe wanting more natural, natural remedies or the connection to the wider whanau. Like, is the whole whnau being cared for or is that healthy or is this treating this one animal? There's a disconnect from the bigger picture and also the ways in which we do business.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:16:47]:
Like, the reality is that unlike human health, a lot of human health, the veterinary sector is a private sector, right? So it's user pays. Everybody who comes into the sector pays for the service other than a few of the government organizations. And therefore it's, you know, there is a lot of. There's a big aspect of making. Making money. And sometimes that was really jarring because people wanted to show care for the people and the animals rather than just wanting to take their money. And they felt like if they were going to take their money, then they needed to tick these other boxes as well. They needed to build relationship and tr.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:17:27]:
They needed to show care for the wider situation and for often their financial situation. And when you consistently get asked to walk away from those values, then eventually it just becomes unsustainable to stay in the job because you've got this disconnect. And people, some of the recipients had left the sector because that disconnect was too big. They actually really wanted to give back to mori communities or to bigger aspirations of mori around equity or rights or health or other things to help Mori people as a whole, rather than just Focusing on an animal. Yeah, so that was another big theme that came out of the research.

Julie South [00:18:19]:
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Do you think there would be very much difference Mori and Pasifika? Do you think that what, what you've discovered, what your research has highlighted, has shown up, would mirror Pasifika if the same research was applied as well?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:20:01]:
Yeah, I think, I think that's very likely. I mean one of the things I think that's interesting and this isn't necessarily from the research, this is my opinion, so I'll state that. But for a lot of Maori and Pasifika, they have a certain experience of interacting with the human health sector which is, you know, there's a lot of distrust and there's a lot of poor experiences maybe. So when they come into the veterinary sector, I don't feel like the setting is that much different. So yeah, there's all the same themes around the importance of building trust and building relationship with that person in order to understand what's a priority for them, what's a priority for their animals. But then there's also the historical element. Like a lot of people, you know, find themselves in situations where they're not able to afford veterinary care. And one of the things that, that some of the recipients talked about is just the, they have much more, maybe more empathy for those people because they, they understand more of the history because it's their history as well.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:21:08]:
So they understand some of the historical processes which have happened, which or the. The values which those people hold, which have led them to be in the financial situation they're in. And there's a lot less judgment or shame around that because, you know, not being able to afford a veterinary service can feel like a really shameful thing for people. You know, standing at the counter and not being able to pay your bill, that's a horrible, vulnerable place. And their hearts really went out to those people.


I think that is. That's got a bit of a double whammy too, because it's, it's hard for anybody to be in that situation, but it's especially hard when you've got other unconscious cognitive biases, prejudices layered and coloring everything else that is taking place as well. Before you got into this research, you've originally trained as a veterinarian. What type of vet and how did your vet studies lead you to research?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:22:25]:
Oh, actually, it's an interesting question. I am still a vet, I'm still working as a vet. I'm a small animal vet now. I did a decade in mixed practice years ago, grew up on a farm. This is going to get all rather long winded, so I'll try and cut it short. I think one thing I realized is that I tried really hard to specialise into an area of veterinary practice and I spent a number of years becoming, just trying to go know more and more about a smaller and smaller area, which turned out to be, as, as you always find out, a bigger and bigger area because the more, the more you know, the less you know. And I think at the end of that I felt like I had all these answers, but it still wasn't sort of making me feel like I could. It still was frustrating because you, you're dealing with people who, you've got all this great answers for the problem for their animal and you're telling them to do this, do this, do this.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:23:24]:
And what it boils down to eventually is your ability to help get these people on board and build enough of a connection with them so you go on this kind of journey with them for the animals health and I guess knowing more and more stuff for me, and I'm not saying this for other people, but for me it just didn't really help me to feel like I was actually getting happier and happier in my job. I felt almost more anxious that I'd get it wrong because there's this obsession with being a specialist and getting it all right. And it's very common in our sector. Like we just want the right answers. We Want to know everything about everything. But at the end of the day, you've got these. You do need those people. But for most of us who are out doing GP kind of practice, you've got these people with who just need somebody to sort of care about them and accompany them on their little journey with their pet and try and.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:24:26]:
Yep. Try and make the best decisions. They're not always going to be gold standard, but you need them to be happy, the animal to be as happy as you can. They can. And, yeah, I just. For me, the people become more and more the focus for me, because I feel like people are so interesting and I guess that's probably why I've ended up in this research, is that I find people fascinating and I'm always keen to learn.

Julie South [00:24:56]:
Are you a GP in private practice or are you a GP in a teaching hospital? How does it work with Otago Poly?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:25:06]:
I'm a GP in private practice.

Julie South [00:25:08]:
And how did you get to be part of Francesca's research at Otago Polytech?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:25:15]:
I've got being paid through their grant money, so I'm like a contractor for them.

Julie South [00:25:20]:
Do you have three things or five.

Things, or one thing that listeners, veterinarians, veterinary nurses, practice managers, clinic owners can do right now to make a difference?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:25:39]:
Yeah, one thing that you can do to make a difference, I think when you come as. When you come to understand what cultural safety is. Cultural safety is not knowing about someone else's culture, but it's actually being willing to examine your own assumptions and biases and understandings about the world. And that's actually a bit of your own personal work. So I guess my challenge would be that in order to do a better job at helping other people, to be culturally, to feel comfortable in the places that you work, part of that is actually examining some of your own assumptions and biases and being aware of those as you interact with people who are from other cultures. Like, what are you assuming that they believe or what are you. What power do you hold? You know, what are you trying to push them to do that might not be fitting with their way of seeing the world? I think also in terms of Mori, I honestly believe that three years ago I felt like I basically hardly knew anything about history in New Zealand and about Mori. And there's so much sort of opinion and reaction about Mori that's based on so much, I think, ignorance or fear or something, but it really needs to be dug into and there's so much richness and digging into that for yourself.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:27:14]:
I don't know. There's so Many resources out there, learning about history through Mori eyes rather than through PKEH eyes, talking to people, being open, having chats, you know, just allowing your world to be expanded a little bit rather than just doing what you've always done.

I think it's synchronistic, whatever, not coincidental, because I don't really like that word. But here we are. You and I are recording this on the week of the Hikoi.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:27:48]:
Yeah. And that's another theme that came out of our research, which really kind of saddened me in some ways, is when I said, when we asked people what Te Tiriti and the veterinary sector tell us about that, mostly we got like these blank spaces, these kind of long gaps, because in reality we haven't explored T30 in the veterinary sector barely at all. And that's a huge piece of work that needs to be done. And it is embarrassing in many ways to be in this sector and to realise how little we've done in this space. When we look to the medical profession, we look to other. Even just most of the other health professions have already made a really, a much better start. It doesn't mean to say that things have changed for Mori dramatically, but I, you know, I've done a bit of thinking and a bit of throwing ideas around with people who know a lot more than me, and I really believe that that needs to be a next step that's taken in terms of really unpacking that with a group of Mori and people from the profession to really dig into what Te Tiriti means for this profession. So I'm not going to dig into that now, but I do think it's a really exciting week, just seeing people come together.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:29:08]:
That's my opinion. That's a political opinion.

What I was pleased to see was that it was peaceful because you've got that many people together around something, around a topic that is extremely personal to lots. It had the potential to be an absolute right, royal mess, but it wasn't. It was actually peaceful. Is there anything else that you want to finish with?

Dr. Jane Jones [00:29:42]:
Look out for the paper. So the paper will be coming out, hopefully in the New Zealand Vet Journal. You know, Mori experiences in the veterinary and the veterinary sector and be part of the conversation. Start up a conversation in your workplace. You'll be surprised what you. What you hear and be curious about what you hear as well. There's no. We don't need to have.

Dr. Jane Jones [00:30:06]:
It's always good to find out what's behind people's opinions, like why do they think like that. And for those beautiful Mori clients out there who are coming into your workplaces, you know, be curious with them about what's important to them. Same actually as with any person who comes into your practice. But these people don't need further injury in our sector. They've already had enough out there in the rest of society. So I would really love it to be a much safer space for them to come into with their very precious family members as we try to help them.

Julie South [00:30:47]:
I hope you found that as enlightening as I did. And I hope you take up the invitations that Jane extended. The first was to connect with Kaumatua in your part of the world so that you can start the conversation around Tikanga in your clinic. She also invited you to check out and look out the paper for the paper in the New Zealand Vet Journal. And then she finishes with an invitation.

To you to be curious.

Tune back in next week because I catch up again with Dr. Helen Beattie, the Kiwi veterinarian who's not afraid to rattle government cages when it comes to animal welfare. So visit VeterinaryVoices NZ and hit that bright green follow button so you don't miss out on her chat. This is Julie south signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self. Until next week, Kaketi Anno.