Getting Better

Emma Espiner goes to Porirua to meet the Wallace whānau and hear about a night in ED that changed their lives.

Clarification: Kōkiri Marae is in Lower Hutt, not in Porirua as stated in the podcast

Trainee doctor and award-winning writer Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) introduces her new podcast and recalls the experience of being thrown in at the deep end while recording the very first interview.

By Emma Espiner

When you set...

For her GP placement, Emma asked to go to Northland. She's on the road with rural doctor Kyle Eggleton, whose weekly clinic is in the remote outpost of Tuparehuia.

Emma went to Northland for her GP placement in order to work alongside Dr Kyle Eggleton. He describes what's involved in working as a doctor for a Māori health provider.

By Dr Kyle Eggleton

I am a general practitioner, but I am not a general practitioner, I am not all...

Dr Vaaiga Autagavaia takes Emma to meet the Rugby League team he coaches in Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, a training programme that goes far beyond sport and into the development of life skills.

Dr Vaaiga Autagavaia is a Samoan doctor who grew up in Mangere East. Here he explains how two Māori doctors drew him into a High School rugby programme at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Ōtara that now uses sport as an innovative way of l...

Emma's in Tairāwhiti, where "by Māori for Māori" has the potential to be more than just a slogan in healthcare.

For this episode of Getting Better, we've stepped outside of day to day medical school training to go to Tairāwhiti where there's a higher proportion of Māori than anywhere else in Aotearoa. With Māori making up 48% of the population, it's one of the strongholds of our language. It also has one of the lowe...

Why do so few indigenous doctors end up becoming surgeons? And why does it matter?

For this episode, we travelled to the Leaders in Indigenous Medical Education - LIME - Conference in Ōtautahi, to meet trailblazing surgeons, doctors and medical educators from indigenous populations in Canada, USA, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Aotearoa.

Before that, we spent an evening with Dr Maxine Ronald (Ngāti Wai, Ngāpuhi) who works as a ...

Emma travels home to Tukorehe for her tā moko, and gets some advice from Dr Glenn Colquhoun.

In this episode of Getting Better we drove to Levin to pay a visit to poet, doctor and youth worker Glenn Colquhoun. But we started that day down the road in Kuku where Emma got her tā moko.

By Emma Espiner and Noelle McCarthy

On a road trip to her ancestral home of Tukorehe, in Horowhenua, on State Highway One Emma explained why the time fe...

Emma spends lockdown at Auckland hospital, and sees how government action on COVID-19 underlines the lack of urgency when it comes to Māori health.

Emma spends lockdown at Auckland hospital, and sees how government action on COVID-19 underlines the lack of urgency when it comes to Māori health.

By Gabrielle Baker

Getting Better consulting producer Gabrielle Baker (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kuri) is a public policy and Māori health expert whose f...