Māori whānau experience of Hospital Transfers

About this research

This summer internship joins and contributes to a research project on Māori whānau experience of Hospital Transfers by being involved and undertaking literature review, in depth analysis of interview data and considering and reflecting on their research and the research impact and contribution.

Publicly-funded hospitals are large healthcare institutions with specialised staff and technologies where people are referred for care or present for acute care in the case of emergencies. For many people, hospitals can be anxiety-raising environments with unfamiliar routines, practices and encounters that can be at times intimate, strange and intrusive. Multiple people are involved throughout a patient’s interaction with hospital healthcare. There are many reasons patients and their whānau engage with hospital health services. Alongside this, centralised care has resulted in different levels of specialist services being available at different hospitals. No matter the reason for engaging health care (acute, elective, or for a chronic condition), the significant parties are the patient and their whānau, the hospital system, and its staff. Holistic, whānau-centred care approaches have long been integral to Māori conceptualisations of health and wellbeing. When unwell whānau members are removed from the familiar context of their everyday lives, the world around them can become strange and feelings of vulnerability often arise.