As a registered Specialist Physiotherapist (Musculoskeletal) I have just been sent the latest suggested changes to the New Zealand Physiotherapy Board's accreditation document. Needless to say the proposed changes are mostly about installing references to the TOW, 'partnership', Maori culture, values, science and demands. Of course, in my response to the proposed changes, I have told the Board that I thoroughly disapprove of the suggested changes, and regard them as offensive, racist, divisive etc. Soon you will have to be an expert in Maori healing practices & spirituality to be licensed as a physiotherapist, and compulsory brainwashing courses on cultural safety are not far away. I have practised for over 50 years and proudly consider myself to be colour blind and without any professional biases with regards to race, culture or ethnicity. I have never treated patients differently depending on race, ethnicity or culture, and don't intend to start. I simply don't know of any physiotherapist who does. The claims of systemic racism are nonsense. The differences between Maori & non-Maori health outcomes accesing of health services are invalidly based on factors mostly outside of the control of health care providers like: personal preferences of Maori/Pacifica when the are ill, socioeconomic factors and a higher % of Maori in rural environments etc. This is not system racism, but a blame/shame tactic of extremist elements in left leaning parties and especially journalists who frankly know little about medicine & health care practitioners.
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It's not enough, and never will be enough to assess people by the content of their character. Martin Luther King and his vision for his country and the dream of racial harmony has been confined to the scrapheap. In its place we have a fixation on critical race theory. It will end in disaster.