Cultural safety and patient trust: the Hui Process to initiate the nurse-patient relationship

Abstract

The Fundamentals of Care framework is recognised for its essential elements to provide quality patient-centred care. Connection and trust as a basis for a caring relationship is a central tenet of this framework. Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand face barriers to health care that are historically and socially constituted. The Hui Process is a model informed by Māori values on connection; when used to inform the Fundamental of Care framework, offers a point of entry for nursing students to develop culturally safe fundamental nursing care. We offer the use of Hui Process and the Fundamental of Care framework as an accessible approach to teach new undergraduate nursing students’ relationship-based nursing through culturally safe practice and communication. The Hui Process involves four culturally safe steps; mihi, whakawhanuangatanga, kaupapa and poroporoaki Students engage with the Fundamentals of Care and the Hui Process during their introduction to nurse–patient communication, to support their first steps towards developing culturally safe nursing praxis.