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The call of the waves nearly saw Kim Tito give away nursing training for an extended surfing OE. But he returned to start a four-decade health career – including the championing of Māori health – and recently resigned as Northland DHB’s general manager of Māori health and mental health & addiction services.

NAME: Kim Tito
DHB: Northland
JOB: General manager, Māori health and mental health and addiction services (retired)

Champion for Māori health Kim Tito ended his time with Northland DHB in February with a moving whakawatea (farewell), 44 years after he originally joined the organisation from school.

He began as a pay clerk and left as Northland DHB’s general manager of Māori health and mental health and addiction services, with his resignation reflecting a consciousness of his health and an appetite for new challenges. “It’s my decision to finish at this juncture and time for me to explore a different awa [river] on a different waka.”

Kim says his family has “a torrid history” of men dying at relatively young ages. “My dad and all his brothers died before they reached 60, so making it to that age has been a goal for me.”

Now 61, he says, “Stopping this job and doing something different should give me the opportunity to do the things I really want to do. Jenny [his wife] and I are setting ourselves up for the next couple of decades.”
However, he expects to maintain some involvement with the health sector and the national, regional and local networks he has built up.

Kim was the first man to gain his registered nursing qualification in Whangarei in 1976. However, after applying and being accepted for nursing, he instead left New Zealand on a surfing OE with a mate, starting in Queensland.
“I met this hippy guy under a palm tree who was sleeping rough and he convinced me that I should go back to New Zealand and get started on my training, so I gave up following the waves.”

Although his decision to train as a nurse raised eyebrows at the time, Kim believes the health sector is a fantastic environment for people to work in if they are motivated by helping others. “The opportunities are unlimited really – it’s a great career destination for men, particularly as a nurse.”

Reflecting on developments since his own training, Kim says the education of nurses has changed quite dramatically and the process of nursing has also changed. “I can remember the first intravenous drips coming in and having to learn how to operate them. Nowadays there is all sorts of technology that nurses have to learn about and operate successfully.”

“But the relationship that nurses need to foster when they meet people for the first time, and build some sort of trust and rapport with the individual and family or whānau, is still the same.

“Having personally been a patient a number of times in bed, it’s very easy to identify those people who have a very genuine desire to listen and develop a helpful relationship between patients and nurses.”

As chief nurse in Whanganui, he once gave an address about the importance of the ‘hyphen’ in the patient-nurse relationship. “What it is about the hyphen that makes people trust and understand and develop that relationship?” he says. “It either happens or it doesn’t.

About three-quarters of Kim’s career has been spent in Northland, interspersed with roles in Taranaki and Whanganui.

Highlights include the establishment of Te Poutokomanawa (Northland DHB’s Māori health services directorate) and the Kaunihera and Kaumatua council of elders to provide cultural advice to the organisation. Another has been supporting and seeing the development of a strong network of Māori health providers throughout Northland.