MIT Nursing academic wins science communication award

Maia Topp’s mission is to help nurses gain the cultural understanding they need to empower diabetes patients to better self-manage the condition.

More than a quarter of a million New Zealanders live with diabetes, meaning their bodies cannot control blood sugar levels properly. The most common form of the disease – Type 2 – is linked to obesity and is preventable. The illness is more prevalent among Māori, Pasifika and South Asian people with these groups also more likely to develop complications due to late detection and poor management.

“In some cases, a patient will have had poor glycaemic control or undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes for ten to fifteen years before they present for treatment,” she says.

“We want to detect and screen earlier while allowing people the skills and the knowledge to look after themselves. If nurses don’t have this understanding then how can we expect them to communicate it to patients.”

After a twenty-year career in in-patient, rural and community nursing; Maia started lecturing at MIT School of Nursing in 2017 hoping to do research work that will help improve the quality of care available.

Currently, she’s completing her doctorate through AUT entitled ‘Diabetes knowledge and diabetes-related cultural safety knowledge: What do new graduate nurses know?’ to further the understanding of what gaps exist in training with a view to developing a programme to bridge them.

“How do you walk alongside someone to live within their cultural world while managing their diabetes so they don’t develop complications?’ she says is the central question. “How do we train nurses to be culturally aware, not just generally but in relation to this chronic condition.”

The answer is by devising ‘culturally-safe’ plans that support an individual to self-manage their condition within their own ethnic or religious context. That may include factoring in celebratory feasting that is a part of so many cultures or engaging religious leaders to explain the illness within a spiritual context.

Recently, Ms Topp received the Women in Science Communication Award for a presentation she gave on her progress to date at AUT’s Post Graduate Symposium.

“It is very humbling. It’s very special and totally unexpected. It gives me excitement midway through the journey. It highlights that what I’m working on is interesting and topical for people.”

The award-winning lecturer works as MIT School of Nursing’s joint research lead and teaches diabetes care across all the institute’s nursing programmes.

“We are really proud Maia has been recognised for her work to develop more holistic care for patients,” says Nursing School Head Assoc Prof Deborah Rowe (Ngāi Tahu). “Her research enhances the school’s efforts to produce graduates with better cultural understanding which in turn creates improved outcomes for the south Auckland community.”

Maia would like to thank her Phd supervisors Associate Professor, Dr Gael Mearns and Dr Rebecca Mowatt at AUT as well as MIT’s Dr Bernadette Solomon for their support on this research journey.

Caption: Dr Rebecca Mowatt, Assoc. Prof. Dr Gael Mearns, Maia Topp and Dr Bernadette Solomon