Tauiwi general practitioners explanations of Maori health: Colonial relations in primary healthcare in Aotearoa/New Zealand?

Abstract

This paper reports initial findings from qualitative research investigating how general practitioners talk about Maori health. Transcripts of semi-structured interviews with 25 general practitioners from urban Auckland were subjected to critical discursive analyses. Through this process of intensive, analytic reading, interpretative repertoires – patterns of words and images about a particular topic – were identified. This paper presents the main features of one such repertoire, termed Maori Morbidity, that the general practitioners used in accounting for poor Maori health status. Our participants were drawing upon a circumscribed pool of ideas and explaining the inequalities in health between Maori and Tauiwi in ways that gave primacy to characteristics of Maori and their culture. We discuss the implications of this conclusion for relations between Maori patients and Tauiwi doctors in primary healthcare settings.