Bowel-screening changes will leave gastroenterology nurses and doctors with more cancer diagnoses

June 11, 2025

A gastroenterology nurse leader says she ‘cannot fathom’ Government moves to condemn more Māori and Pasifika to bowel cancer diagnoses.

One of the hardest parts of being a nurse endoscopist is having to tell a patient and their whānau about a colorectal cancer diagnosis.

I answer their questions, hold their hands, cry with them and try to help them understand the extensive path ahead of them of testing, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.  Sometimes I know that palliative care will be needed too, which means the cancer has advanced beyond cure.

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Sadly, as a gastroenterology nurse, this is often part of my work day now.

One way to avoid such a horrible diagnosis – and to prevent bowel cancer – is through screening. That’s why we have a national bowel screening programme.

Through screening, and then colonoscopies if there is a positive results, pre-cancerous polyps can be found and removed in the one appointment. It is fast and relatively painless. In fact, many patients say getting ready for the test is worse than the test itself.

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Why should nurses like me and my medical colleagues be left to pick up the pieces when a patient has to be told they have bowel cancer, when we could have stopped it earlier?

The other important fact is that the cost of having a colonoscopy is far, far less than the cost of treating bowel cancer.

As a nurse practitioner — and chair of the Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa-NZNO gastroenterology nurses’ college – my work is dedicated to early detection and saving lives, so I welcome any investment in preventative bowel screening.

So, it is hard to fathom why the Government is reallocating $36 million set aside to help redress a known health inequity by lowering the starting screening age for Māori and Pacific patients from 60 to 50. This would have caught many more advanced polyps and early cancers and saved more lives.

Photo: AdobeStock. Medically accurate illustration of small intestine cancer

By moving the funding to instead screening the general New Zealand population from age 58 — two years earlier — we will find fewer polyps and condemn many more Māori and Pasifika people to a bowel cancer diagnosis.

The Government should do the right thing and reinstate the planned age extension for Māori and Pacific patients.

The Government has done this in spite of all the evidence showing that Māori and Pacific patients aged between 50 and 60 are a high-risk group — including advice from its own health officials that would have seen twice as many Māori and Pacific lives saved.

In fact research by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons suggests more strategies are needed to boost access to colonoscopies for Māori, who access them at a far lower rate than non-Māori.

Twenty two per cent of Māori are diagnosed with bowel cancer in their 50s compared to 12 per cent for New Zealanders overall, according to Bowel Cancer NZ. And early colorectal cancer rates for Māori are growing faster than the rest of the population, at 36 per cent compared to 26 per cent, according to University of Otago research.

Why is the Government cutting a life-saving approach?

Finding pre-cancerous colon polyps and removing them while having a colonoscopy check stops cancer developing. So why is the Government cutting a programme extension that gives early access to life-saving testing for this high-risk group?

This Government has instructed public health-care providers to tighten their belts and spend their limited budgets in a way that will maximise the value for the taxpayer. Yet, they don’t follow their own edicts.

The Government has condemned many more New Zealanders to hearing the worst news.

The Government should do the right thing and reinstate the planned age extension for Māori and Pacific patients.

It should also follow through with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s pre-election promise to bring the national bowel screening programme up to the same standard as other countries we compare ourselves to.  Australia and many European countries provide bowel screening to everyone from the age of 50 and New Zealand should too.

Why should nurses like me and my medical colleagues be left to pick up the pieces when a patient has to be told they have bowel cancer, when we could have stopped it earlier through the national bowel screening programme?

The Government has condemned many more New Zealanders to hearing the worst news.


  • Karen Kempin is a Hutt Valley-based nurse endoscopist, nurse practitioner and chair of NZNO’s gastroenterology nurses’ college.