Hope through healing

An affinity with the people and a desire to help them move forward drew Teresa Trotman (Ngāti Wai) to her role as a nurse working with whānau in Te Ope Whakaora supported accomodation at Addington in Ōtautahi.

And it’s her compassion that helps her engage and work with her clients – who are mostly Māori – to ensure they receive the best medical care available, something many have not experienced throughout their lives.

“Often they get diagnosed and chucked a whole lot of pills and I’m really against that,” she says.

“Sometimes, they’ve been diagnosed at 16, given some meds and I’m looking at them thinking, where did they get that diagnosis from, because now you’re 27 and no ones ever thought to redo it. If I can solve that for them, then maybe they’ll have some faith in the system that really doesn’t suit them.”

Teresa has a long history in nursing, along with several years in other careers, and says it was while working in hospital emergency departments that she first realised she not only understood the challenges her clients faced, but she had a natural affinity with them.

“I went to ED, and in ED we’ve got all our alcoholics and drug addicts and I got on with them. It’s not easy because once they get to that stage, nobody wants to see them anymore. Nobody wants anything to do with them, they’re just so complicated but I love the complication.

“I always used to keep them calm. I’m well aware of the type of background they would come from. There’s plenty of that background in my family so I’m not not immune to it. So it’s something I’ve always been really passionate about. It’s just an area that I really like, I really love these guys,” she says.

Teresa is also well aware of the high rate of recidivisim once people are released from prison and works hard to ensure any of her patients who have been in prison, don’t go back.

“They’re going in and out, in and out and I don’t want them to go back in, I really don’t, it’s something I feel passionate about.”

There are too many Māori in prison and “I don’t want to see our race go backwards”.

“There aren’t enough of us as it is I don’t want them to waste their lives in prison. I want to see them where I am, or where you are, you know.”

She uses the Whare Tapa Whā model of health and wellbeing, developed by Tā Mason Durie, which uses the wharenui as a symbol for the four pou of Māori health – taha wairua (spiritual wellbeing), taha hinengaro (mental/emotional wellbeing), taha tinana (physical wellbeing) and taha whānau (family/social wellbeing) and says most of her patients have “wobbly posts”.

“That’s something I very much believe in and so with these guys, I need to find out which of those wobbly posts is about to fall over, which one is okay, which one needs a little bit of a hand.”

Combined with her extensive medical experience, Teresa is ideally suited to her role with Te Ope Whakaora and it’s also enabled her to reconnect with her spiritual side.

“When I went for my job interview here, some of the words they used were exactly where I wanted to hear and it reinforced what was already in me. I’d kind of ignored it through my life, the spiritual side, there actually isn’t a job that gives you that all round spiritual role so this is good for me,” she says.

“I haven’t attended church for ages but we had a little church service here around Matariki and it could have made me cry because I forgot how much it meant to me. So I’m lucky I get that as well and you know, I’m hoping it’s made me a better person.”

There’s little doubt it has, and equally little doubt that Teresa has also helped make others better as well.