After 30 years as a GP and writer, Lucy O'Hagan now has a solo show coming to theatres around Aotearoa. Lucy shares with The Frontline audience her perspective on the patient-doctor interaction as an act of storytelling.

"Every consult is an improv", "Medicine itself is a culture", and "You can't do anything without relationship" -- Lucy's style focuses on power relationships, storytelling, and mauri rather than just medical facts.

In this interview we also explore issues of trust, cultural safety, the biomedical model, healthcare funding, and manaakitanga. Amazing.

To catch her show live, check out:https://lucyohagan.com/

Dr Erik Monasterio is a forensic psychiatrist with a long and illustrious career as a leader in forensic mental health, a speciality that works at the intersection of the criminal justice system and the health system.

We talk about potential solutions to NZ's shocking levels of youth suicide, serious mental illness, anxiety, and addressing the social determinants of health: things like social isolation, hunger, and homelessness.

We touch on healthcare privatisation, the extraordinary cost of incarceration, rehab, community healthcare, health targets, declined referrals, moral injury among staff, and above all, Erik's deep-seated belief that we can do better.

He says we can't resign ourselves to anger, despondency, and frustration. We can get back to a better, more fair society, one that looks after its own people.

"It can be done."

Today we talk with patient advocate and healthcare researcher, Dr Malcolm Mulholland, founder of Patient Voice Aotearoa and leader within Kaitiaki Hauora, Together for Public Health, an advocacy group fighting the privatisation of New Zealand's public healthcare system. 

We discuss the big myths of private healthcare: that it's cheaper and more efficient than public healthcare. And have a chat about the risks of healthcare privatisation: a loss of access for rural communities, a black box of 'secret' spending and loss of accountability, cherry-picked cases, and the shifting of public healthcare staff into the private hospital setting, accelerating the erosion of our public healthcare service. 

For the first time in 90 years, police are campaigning publicly for better pay and working conditions. There are news stories of police using food banks, while numbers of new recruits in training have dropped. What are the facts behind the "Repay the Risk" campaign and how can the public ensure our essential public services are supported and maintained? We speak with Steve Watt, President of the NZ Police Association.

Last year, doctors and poets Art Nahill and Glenn Colquhoun drove thousands of kilometers in a converted 'Vanbulance' on their Hikoi4Health, and had thousands of conversations with patients, locals, and experts about what is wrong with NZ healthcare, and how we could improve it -- if we really wanted to.

They share those lessons here, on The Frontline with Dr Gary Payinda, in advance of the publication of their book, and the release of their documentary, coming out in September.

You heard it here first: Rethinking Health is coming.

https://healthreformnz.org/

PSA union organiser Theresa Nelson talks about how cuts to government healthcare budgets affect our rural communities. And whether our poorest, most remote, and underserved rural communities are spending far too much, or simply getting far too little.

#psa #health #tetaitokerau #rural #rawene #healthnz

Dr Janet Hoek is a University of Otago Professor who studies tobacco harm, estimated to cost NZ a cool $2.5 billion dollars a year, while generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from New Zealanders, and $1.7 in taxes for the government.

We talk about the scale of illicit tobacco in NZ, the risk posed, who to believe, the history of the tobacco industry, illicit tobacco prosecutions, and the human cost of NZ tobacco sales: estimated at 13 lives lost per day.

One of the great minds of our nation, demographer and Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow at Koi Tū Centre for Informed Futures spoke with Dr Gary about immigration, productivity, xenophobia, and population growth in a New Zealand that is getting much older, more diverse, and more Auckland-centric. A far-reaching and heavy discussion with much food for thought.

People, place and prosperity: the case for a population strategy

https://informedfutures.org/population-media-release/

Midwives are the most understaffed healthcare professionals in NZ. They're in scarce supply in part because reimbursement and working conditions are based on a decades old contract that some would describe as archaic and unfair.

Listen in as ex-midwife Alison Eddy, CEO of the NZ College of Midwives, tells us all about the history of NZ midwifery, the recent High Court case they've won (which govt has already said they will appeal), and the ups-and-downs of a 24-hour a day profession caring for -- and sometimes saving -- the lives of mothers and babies.

Whether you're self-employed or an employee, public worker or private, this conversation on the nature of work, public service, and fair wages should have relevance.

When kids or adults face poverty, hunger, and a breakdown in social relationships, is it any surprise that they turn to gangs, drugs, or violence? Isopo Samu of Tokotoko Solutions has spent a lifetime working with at-risk youth as a police officer, a teacher, and for the past 15 years as the founder or director of multiple youth and work-training organisations. We talk about how we can best use our time and money to help keep kids in school, and families together.