Abstract
Background: Cultural competence in New Zealand’s health workforce is a well-known concept that serves as the foundation towards growing a culturally safe health landscape. When navigating from cultural competency to cultural safety, the utilisation of Cultural Humility can provide healthcare staff a framework to develop their own knowledge on the intersections of culture and healthcare.In the Southern DHB, two clinical staff members (Witana Petley and Amy Mouru) created the “cultural humility hui” which provided a space to collectively share, critique, evaluate and learn about cultural nuances that occur within the healthcare system. The hui was developed with the intention to bring together diverse views, under the umbrella of cultural humility, to develop ongoing korero and collective growth to improved the cultural safety of the DHB staff. Through monthly hui of learning about culture and collectively engaging in activities to provoke korerö on sensitive subjects, attendees reported improved confidence with engaging with different cultures and reported a new appreciation of the diversity present within the hospital settings.
This novel venture helps to build onto the foundation of cultural competency, for the improvement of cultural safety within the Southern DHB. Cultural humility can be easily applicable to a variety of teams and fields due to its strength coming from the diversity of people who attend rather than the diversity of skills in the room. This can be utilised in any space and may be beneficial to health services who are looking to direct their growth from cultural competency to cultural safety.