Cardiovascular services

This is a pretty unique directorate worldwide. There's not many places in the world where all of the specialties dealing with cardiovascular disease are brought together under one structure.

Okay. Hello. Hi. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Talofa. I'm Nese.

I've worked in this hospital for 15 years. I'm a recent nanny.

My heritage is Ngāti Māhanga from Tainui.

So people come in and they see us first. So I always try to wear bright lipstick and make the place brighter.

The main part of our mahi is to help navigate Māori patients through the health system.

Support with housing, and social services, whether that's with WINZ and work.

So what I do is help people after their surgery to get back on their feet. 

At the moment I lead our operating rooms and anaesthesia department. 

I'm working in representing mana whenua and tangata whenua.

We are there to whakamana (empower) them and to remember that they are, you know, really important.

When do you feel, like, proud or maybe like, oh, the work is worth it? 

They tell me [laughs]. When the patients tell me that they've felt empowered to make decisions for themselves.

Going back to mahi, to exercising regularly, to eating healthy kai, is you know, my life's work.

And I get to see people at their most vulnerable state and it's such a privilege to be trusted at that point. 

My team and I were working on a heart transplant patient. The fact that she could walk forward with support. And it kind of brought, like, tears to everyone.

Sometimes, you don't need resources; you just need more human caring.

Fundamentally, our work is about people and that's why I chose this work.

What makes you feel like a badass?

Wow.

I saw that question too.

[Laughs] I don't know. Just being Māori, I think, has been enough for me. And I think I see that with patients too. Sometimes just being present and being able to have a kōrero with them.

Being a very rare Māori in a senior role, you know, and having your postgraduate, your masters, working towards nurse practitioner. 

Some of us have families, we're at work, and we balance everything.

I'm so resilient. Like, it's such a busy ward. But I'm just like, I can handle this.

I was an amateur boxer for the New Zealand women's boxing team.

Seeing Willy every day inspires me. 

What about outside of work?

I guess when the All Blacks beat England…yeah. [Laughs] And Australia, and South Africa.

But I also have a very supportive husband. You know, I couldn’t do...he winds me up every day too. Oh my god.

[Laughter]

And here I am crying about it. Aroha mai. So yeah, having a supportive husband, supportive kids, make a difference in terms of being able to able to balance this. Because this life is hectic.

The fact that you have people in your department that you can relate to, hang out with, joke with, gossip with, keeps me going to work every day. You know. It creates a camaraderie. They are really the only ones that understand you, they laugh with you, they cry with you. But they are also the only ones that have been through the same thing that you’ve been through. They may not have been there, but they understand what you are going through.

We’re all just, you know, normal people. Normal people with normal lives that really enjoy this part of our lives. We just want to help hearts be better.