Cultural Competence in Nursing Care for Aboriginals

This nursing assignment discusses the importance of providing culturally competent care to Aboriginal patients. It highlights the cultural significance of their traditions, preferences and inhibitions and how to provide empathetic and compassionate person-centred care. The module has helped the author to develop knowledge about the prerequisites for ensuring different sustainable and effective transformational changes within the healthcare system. The article also discusses the ethical principles that need to be followed while caring for Aboriginal patients.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Description:
I believe in providing the best quality care to patients that not only helps in providing
them better quality life but also enhances their healthcare experiences. I believe in providing
empathetic and compassionate person centred care for the patients putting them in the central
position of communication and decision-making. However, I had very little knowledge about the
cultural significance of their tradition, preferences and their inhibition. I used to believe that
since they are the natives of Australia, they should be following the western cultures and
traditions. However, after going through the unit module on the Aboriginals, I had come to know
a large number of information about different cultural preferences of the aboriginals. It has saved
me from providing culturally incompetent care of such a patient if such a patient would have
visited me in the future. The most heartening fact that I have learnt from the unit so that how
they were treated in the period of colonisation. I have understood that such poor treatment over
numerous centuries had resulted them in poor health in the present generation. They had been
exploited mentally, emotionally, physically as well as financially and the gap in health status of
the indigenous and non-indigenous people is the result of colonisation effects only. I knew not all
these and therefore this module helped me to gather deep amount of knowledge on them. The
entire module has helped me to learn the proper ways by which I can provide culturally
competent practice to the aboriginals in the future.
Feeling:
I was quite overwhelmed after going through the unit module of the aboriginals, as I did
not have any idea about the cultural traditions of the native people initially. I was happy that I
got the opportunity to develop myself an expert nurse who could provide culturally competent

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care to the aboriginals. Not only about the cultural significance and about associated data, I also
felt quite shaken by the racism that they are facing over the years even after the Europeans had
left their lands and regions. I was quite shocked by the fact that it was the humans who treated
the other human beings in an inhumanly manner. They also demoted them to the level of flora
and fauna. At one time, they were included in the flora and fauna act and this helped me to
understand to what extent they have been humiliated and tortured. All these resulted in
development of feeling of the necessity of treating such individuals with empathy and
compassion so that they can overcome the pain they had been suffering for long and can trust us
for serving them with culturally competent care that helped to maintain their dignity and
autonomy.
Evaluation:
The unit module on the aboriginals had helped me largely in developing minute facts that
would help me to provide a culturally competent service to the aboriginals. They are very
particular about their cultural norms and rules and felt severely disheartened if disrespected or
ill-treated (Freeman et al., 2014). Over the year, the exploitation they have faced had made them
negative about the sterner and therefore they cannot rely on the western mode of education. They
have deep rooted feeling that western healthcare professionals would never be able to align or
respect their culture and therefore they tend to keep themselves away from western healthcare
education (Lin et al., 2017). The unit module has helped us to understand how different policies
and health promotion campaigns had helped them to develop trust on the western healthcare.
Therefore, culturally incompetent practice from my side may result in huge loss of the effort as
they may gain withdraw from the forward steps that had taken towards their health development
and gaining health literacy (McCough, Wynaden & Wright, 2018). The module has helped me to

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develop knowledge about the prerequisites for ensuring the different sustainable and even the
effective transformational changes within the healthcare system whereby different cultural
strategies are embedded within the process and policies. Some of the ethical principles that I
have studied in the course are the aboriginal Self-determination (Durey et al., 2017). I also learnt
about the importance of reciprocity, accountability and effective modes of communication
preferred in their cultures. These would help me to develop cultural awareness and patients
would be highly satisfied.
Analysis:
The module has helped me to learn some of the important aspects that I need to keep in
mind while caring for the patients who are from culturally diverse background. I had been able to
understand the basis difference between their cultural and western culture that I need to apply
while preparing for intervention. This can be analysed with the help of several examples. One of
the most important aspects of providing them culturally competent practice is exhibiting proper
nonverbal communication skills that do not affect their cultural norms (Irving et al., 2017). The
culture of the native people does not allow them to engage in direct eye contact unlike the
westerners who believe eye contact is important to show oneself as confident and make the
opposite person believe on them. The native people do not prefer direct questions from strangers
and therefore as a professional, I should always engage in indirect questioning in order to gather
knowledge about their lifestyles. Moreover, the unit had provided extra importance to develop
informal relationship and bonding with them before starting interviewing or asking them any
questions (Hole et al., 2015). Researchers are of the opinion that rapport building helps in
establishing trust on the healthcare professionals and therefore the aboriginals can comply or

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adhere with the interventions. Therefore, in similar ways, the module has helped me to develop
my cultural competency and mane me prepared for future challenges (Durey et al., 2017).
Conclusion:
The entire module has helped me to develop cultural awareness about the traditions,
preferences and inhibitions of the native people. I had already learnt before that in order to
ensure high patient satisfaction, person centred care is needed. One of the important attribute of
this is to keep the patient in the centre of decision making and communicating with him in ways
by which he feels respected and cared for (Hole et al., 2015). Similarly, in case of the native
persons also, I will try to put them in the centre of the care and decision-making and provide
interventions for them in a culturally competent manner so that they feel respected and adhered
to the care plans. This would help me to contribute to the meeting of the gaps in the health
inequality between the natives and non-natives helping them to live better quality lives.
Action Plan:
The NMBA codes of ethics instruct nurses to provide culturally competent care to all
people irrespective of their ethnicity, social economic background, culture, castes and others
(Jongen et al., 2018). Therefore, I will try to provide care based on the standards of code of
ethics. Justice is one of the most important ethical principles and by following this module, I will
be able to integrate justice while caring for native people. I will develop therapeutic relationship
with the patients so that they can rely on me. Moreover, the module has helped me to develop
cultural sensitivity and cultural awareness that would not only help me to treat native people but
also integrated principles that would help me to care patients from wide variety of backgrounds
(Wain et al., 2016).

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References:
Durey, A., Halkett, G., Berg, M., Lester, L., & Kickett, M. (2017). Does one workshop on
respecting cultural differences increase health professionals’ confidence to improve the
care of Australian Aboriginal patients with cancer? An evaluation. BMC health services
research, 17(1), 660.
Freeman, T., Edwards, T., Baum, F., Lawless, A., Jolley, G., Javanparast, S., & Francis, T.
(2014). Cultural respect strategies in Australian Aboriginal primary health care services:
beyond education and training of practitioners. Australian and New Zealand journal of
public health, 38(4), 355-361.
Hole, R. D., Evans, M., Berg, L. D., Bottorff, J. L., Dingwall, C., Alexis, C., ... & Smith, M. L.
(2015). Visibility and voice: Aboriginal people experience culturally safe and unsafe
health care. Qualitative health research, 25(12), 1662-1674.
Irving, M., Gwynne, K., Angell, B., Tennant, M., & Blinkhorn, A. (2017). Client perspectives on
an Aboriginal community led oral health service in rural Australia. Australian Journal of
Rural Health, 25(3), 163-168.
Jongen, C., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Clifford, A. (2018). Health Organisation and
System Cultural Competence Interventions. In Cultural Competence in Health (pp. 99-
113). Springer, Singapore.
Lin, I. B., Ryder, K., Coffin, J., Green, C., Dalgety, E., Scott, B., ... & O’Sullivan, P. B. (2017).
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information for aboriginal australians:“My Back on Track, My Future”. Pain
Medicine, 18(11), 2070-2080.
McGough, S., Wynaden, D., & Wright, M. (2018). Experience of providing cultural safety in
mental health to Aboriginal patients: A grounded theory study. International journal of
mental health nursing, 27(1), 204-213.
Wain, T., Sim, M., Bessarab, D., Mak, D., Hayward, C., & Rudd, C. (2016). Engaging
Australian Aboriginal narratives to challenge attitudes and create empathy in health care:
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