Exploration of the self: the journey of one Pakeha cultural safety nurse educator

Abstract

Cultural safety is taught in all undergraduate nursing programmes in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There is a predominance of Pakeha nurse educators in teaching this content. There is little explanation of what being Pakeha entails. This perpetuates a silence and continues the dominant hegemonic position of Pakeha in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study suggests that as Pakeha cultural safety nurse educators we examine our dominance and critique the delivery of cultural safety education. This autobiographical study undertakes to explore the Pakeha identity of a cultural safety nurse educator. I discuss identity in the context of a globalised world, and I challenge the idea of a definitive Pakeha identity. There are multiple descriptions of Pakeha, all underdeveloped and inadequate for the purposes of cultural safety education. In this study, I use the heuristic process of Moustakas (1990) and Maalouf's (2000) ideas of vertical and horizontal heritage to locate and present the essence of the self. In keeping with the purpose of cultural safety education, I consider my ethnic cultural self as described by Bloch (1983) and explore Helms' (1990) theory of White racial identity development. This thesis describes the position of one Pakeha in the context of teaching cultural safety in an undergraduate nursing degree programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand. For Pakeha cultural safety nurse educators I argue that exploration of one's heritages Maalouf (2000) and location of a personal Pakeha identity is pivotal to progressing the enactment of cultural safety in Aotearoa /New Zealand.