Brochures promoting disability awareness are likely to end up in the waste paper basket if given to district health board staff as part of orientation, Dot Wilson says.
Ms Wilson, a member of the Otago and Southland district health boards' disability support advisory committee, said at its November meeting new staff needed to have someone sharing information with them and challenging the way they might think.
Brochures were not the answer. Fellow member Helen Algar said staff had to recognise that disability did not just involve people with physical difficulties.
Seeing disability awareness as serving the needs of a small number of people, when the opposite was true, was a barrier to disability awareness becoming an integral part of health workers' behaviour.
A report outlining progress on implementing the disability strategy showed that disability awareness training is not covered in generic orientation for new staff in either board.
However, some services do have special education sessions and training resources and management staff are to see how this could be extended to other areas.
Promotional pamphlets are proposed for the staff orientation pack and staff are also to see if there are programmes at other health boards which could be used.
Member Louise Carr said awareness had to go beyond training to become an intrinsic part of the way people behaved whenever they met any patient.
It was about respect for human dignity and should form part of training and evaluation for all health professionals.
Senior contract manager Leanne Illingworth said it would be difficult to include the training in the general orientation which all staff went through as it was a challenge to fit in what was already covered.
Any awareness programme had to be sustainable.
At the committee's October meeting the Pan Disability Agency Management Group, which has representatives from several community health providers, highlighted instances where disabled or elderly patients had been treated poorly by Otago board services, including a blind hospital patient who went hungry because nobody told them their meals were there.
One of those involved with the group, CCS Disability Action southern regional manager Paul Martin, said members had since informally met the boards' regional planning and funding general manager David Chrisp, which had been encouraging.
He felt some progress was being made, although at this stage they were " little, baby steps".
The issues being raised by the group were not about money, but about good practice. There was an acknowledgement of the contribution the community could make to help raise standards.
He agreed disability could be seen narrowly, but the census statistics suggested it was one person in six in the population. The proportion of disabled among those using hospital services was likely to be higher still.
