Cultural Competence in Nursing Care for Aboriginals

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

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NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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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NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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