Assessment title - Cultural Safety Essay Name Student number Tutor name

Assessment title - Cultural Safety Essay
Name
Student number
Tutor name
Total word count – 1787 words
0
Name
Student Number
Unit Code

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. STEP 1
2. STEP 2
3. STEP 3
4. STEP 4
5. STEP 5
6. REFERENCES
1
Name
Student Number
Unit Code

STEPS 1-5
1. Demonstrate your understanding of the following key concepts.
a) Compare and contrast personal racism and systemic/institutional racism.
b) Briefly discuss the power dynamics associated with the concept of whiteness and describe how
it may relate to contemporary nursing practice in Australia.
c) Compare and contrast the concepts cultural safety and cultural competency.
a) Racism refers to the discriminative behaviour met out to a person in the society based
merely on the colour of their skin. It may lead to debarring the person from basic
societal benefits like education, employment and healthcare. When a person of colour
is subjected to an individual level of discrimination, it is referred to as personal
racism. It is firmly guided by prejudices, which when endorsed by one group results in
reinforcement of the other group as inferior (Jones, 1997). Institutional/ systemic
racism refers to the discrimination in administrative policies and practices being met
out to various groups within an institution. A relevant example of this may be found in
schools where punitive measures are more stringent for students of colour or within
the employment sector where hiring practices are biased towards certain races. The
urge for social dominance in this hierarchy has led to both intentional and
unintentional expressions of bias (Brigham, 1993) (156 words).
b) The concept of whiteness is referred to as the selective availability of benefits like
quality healthcare, wages and education for the whites over people of colour. In
purview of the contemporary nursing practice in Australia, whiteness has resulted in a
massive health gap between the health of the Aboriginal Australians and the white
Australian population. Racial discrimination has been a hindrance in provision of
adequate healthcare access to the aboriginal population. Delivering culturally
appropriate healthcare facilities to this population remains a challenge mainly due to
2
Name
Student Number
Unit Code

miniscule representation of their population within the medical community. According
to a 2011 report, the Australian nursing community had a mere 0.8% representation
from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Stuart & Nielsen, 2011). Even this
minuscule representation suffers from white dominance in the contemporary nursing
field and their indigenous practices are ignored, even when treating their own
population (Nielsen et al., 2014). This means less knowledge-flow from their
community and consequent widening of the health gap. (163 words)
c) The term cultural safety is said to have been originated within the Maori mid-wifery
students- community while being trained in an Anglo educational setup. It was
devised to describe their fear of safety of the colonial training measures. Today, it has
become a framework for navigating the risks and challenges concerning the health of
indigenous people. It amalgamates the concepts of sociocultural and historical
backgrounds to devise effective health service based on cultural identity of the
recipient (Johnstone & Kanitsaki, 2007). While it enables the patient to draw
maximum benefits from the healthcare provider, it also results in endorsement of
regimes yielding positive results.Cultural competence, on the other hand, focuses on
the skill of the healthcare provider to deliver a positive experience for the patient by
integration of cultural parameters with clinical concepts. It involves assessment of
community-based values and transforming the derived knowledge resource to provide
bespoke healthcare for meeting the cultural, linguistic and social needs of the patient
(Durie, 2001). Both cultural safety and cultural competence seem to be contrasting
with one another with the former being a robust branding for inequality and
discrimination of medical policies and practices for indigenous people; nonetheless,
3
Name
Student Number
Unit Code