Kia orana, e tamaine Kuki Airani au. E inarere au na'au e Tararo Natuaiterai Vetea Arikii o akatoka manava, no roto mai au ite matakeinanga Ngati Paruarangi o Mauke.
Ko Te Mani'i o Te Rangi toku vaka, ko Te Kau Enua o Avaiki toku marae, ko Koenga toku ia punā vai. Toku nga metua ko Natuatiterai e Aneru, e mā'angau e toku tungāne Elijah-Joel. Ko Eva-Parani Collins toku ingoa.
Kia orana everyone, my name is Eva-Parani Collins, and I am a Cook Island woman from the island of Mauke. I completed a BSc majoring in Anatomy in 2021 and am about to start my 5th year of Medicine. I wanted to do this internship for 3 main reasons: (1) to connect with our Pacific community in Dunedin (2) to understand how our Pacific providers differ from Western providers, and what benefit this has for their clients, so I can integrate this into my future clinical practise, and (3) to strengthen my pacific identity.
I was placed with Pacific Trust Otago, an organisation which has been running in Dunedin since 1999. Their mission is to enhance Tangata Moana in the Otago region, through culturally responsive health and social services, so that our people are connected, resilient and thriving. Though their team is small, they offer a massive range of services to a large region, and I was privileged enough to be involved in many of them. These included community groups, health promotion events, youth initiatives, and mental health services.
A quote which keeps sticking with me is something that was said when the Ministry for Pacific Peoples visited us at PTO: ‘Although there aren’t many of us, we punch above our weight’. Earlier this year, I had a Pacific Immersion Weekend with the medical school, and I wrote in my reflection essay ‘One of my biggest goals as a clinician is to serve our communities but I fear I’m not enough. Do I deserve a seat at the table as a ‘plastic islander’?’. At medical school and the hospital, where things often feel grey and soulless, I can feel myself sticking out, treated by my peers as either ‘an expert in pacific culture’ or ‘not really pacific’. The work that needs to be done, especially for our communities, feel overwhelming and myself underqualified. However, my mindset has shifted greatly over this internship. I’ve been surrounded by strong Pacific women, and I felt like my work mattered. I was so grateful to be in space where people cared about each other, about the work, where people were people and not just numbers. Where medical school has been grey scale, at PTO it felt like I was living in colour. Despite there being no doctors are PTO, I learnt more from their staff about what it means to provide care than from any real doctor. I am not naive, and I know going back into our health system will come with many challenges, but I feel more ready to face them. I have learnt that it is not about whether I deserve a seat at the table, I have to take a seat there, just like everyone at PTO, so that I can make room for my community to sit there with me and have their voices heard.
Eva-Parani Collins
Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MB ChB)
University of Otago
