Effective and respectful interaction with Māori: How the regulators of health professionals are responding to the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Act 2019

ABSTRACT

AIMS: To ascertain the response of registered health professional regulators to the legislated requirement under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Act 2019 (HPCA Amendement Act) that practitioners are culturally competent and, specifically, enabling "effective and respectful interaction with Māori". METHOD: A document analysis of the extent to which the culturally competent requirement is indicated in information about professional competencies within publicly available information of the 17 responsible authorities (RAs) that govern health practitioners under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance legislation. RESULTS: Three years after the amendment to the original Act (HPCA Act) requiring health professionals to be culturally competent specifically in relation to interacting with Māori, only four of the 17 RAs fully reference the amended requirement, and only two RAs link this specific cultural competence to the requirements of the amended Act (HPCA Amendment Act). The majority of the RAs have yet to integrate references to engaging with Māori in this way into their professional competencies. CONCLUSIONS: Culturally competent practice is only meaningful once it is enacted by individual practitioners in their interactions with others. It is imperative for RAs to include the cultural competence requirement into their published information about professional competencies as this would signal to the profession, practitioners, and wider community that effective and respectful interaction with Māori is a fundamental expectation of all health practitioners in this country. Other issues identified during the analysis suggest an emphasis on administration and bureaucracy. This presents an opportunity for consolidating the practice of RAs including how key functions are expressed and promulgated.