Aims: To investigate the views of medical students early in their clinical training and their clinical teachers with respect to Māori health teaching and learning.
Method: A survey approach was used to appraise responses from 276 students early in their clinical training and 135 clinical teachers. All participants were asked to respond to a set of questions about the teaching and assessment of Hauora Māori (Māori health). These responses were analysed using descriptive statistics and inspection of the distribution of responses (skewness and kurtosis). A further open ended question was asked about suggested changes to the medical school and the responses relating to Hauora Māori were analysed using a summative content analysis system.
Results: The distribution of the data revealed strongly skewed responses in the direction of disagreement in relation to four of the six student questionnaire items indicating that most students question the quality of Hauora Māori teaching and assessment. Also, two of the five items from the clinical teacher questionnaire were strongly skewed to the disagreement option suggesting that many clinical teachers felt underprepared to teach this aspect of the curriculum. The content analysis identified a range of views, often polarised, with responses at the negative end of the spectrum revealing a degree of resistance to Māori health teaching and learning.
Conclusions: The findings of this study raise concerns about the extent to which medical students are supported to achieve Hauora Māori learning outcomes. The consistency between medical student and clinical teacher findings points to systemic issues, and the solutions are likely to be multi-layered. At the institutional level, Māori health needs to be consistently presented as a legitimate and critical area of medical education. At the educational level, it is important that all teachers are supported to provide high quality teaching, learning and assessment of Hauora Māori across the curriculum.