Communication Skills Training Program for Nurses in Aboriginal Healthcare

Implementation Plan Template
7210MED Cultural Capability Strategy
RATIONALE
Title: Communication skills training program for the nurses
Aim: To increase the communication skills among the health care professionals for interacting
with the aboriginal patient and help them access an equal health care just as their nn
aboriginal counterparts.
Background:
.
Effective cross cultural communication skills are critical towards increasing the provision
for culturally sensitive healthcare under community health settings and in hospitals. Two-
way communication process between the indigenous and non-indigenous service users
and the healthcare professionals helps in proper understanding of the culture of the
Aboriginal patients and also helps in improving overall quality of care (Hunt, 2013). Lack
of proper communication skills among the health care professionals have been found to be
one of the important reason for early hospital discharge or rejection of westernised
treatment. It is also recognised as one of the important reason for the medical non-
compliance and high rate of mortality among the aboriginal population (Hunt, 2013).
Hence development of communications skills by proper training has been considered as
the appropriate strategy.
Benefits:
 Increasing a positive therapeutic relationship between the client and the health
care employees.
 Increases the level of confidence among the aboriginal people to clarify their
doubts regarding medical jargon or the treatment regimen.
 It further reduces the likelihood of the misunderstandings and the errors
and reduces the rate of the medical noncompliance or discharge against
the medic al advice.
 Further it also improves the professional skills and improves the level of
reputation and respect between the patient and the health practitioners
(Long, 2012).
 Increases the profit of the organisation by increasing the number of clients.
 Reduces the rate of medication errors.
Objectives:
NOTE: use SMART
objectives Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Timely
 To increase effective communication skills among the nurse and health care
workers
 To obtain positive feedback from the aboriginal patients regarding the type of
care
 To increase the likelihood of aboriginal patient to use westernised treatment than
the traditional treatment.
 To ease their access to health care by improving proper communication portals.

Implementation Plan Template
7210MED Cultural Capability Strategy
 To complete the communication training within 3months. .
DEVELOPMENT
This strategy will include: This strategy will not include:
Primary care setting of a rural health care organisation
present in close proximity to an aboriginal community.
Training about increasing the communication skills
should be provided to the health care staffs.
To include the nurses and health care workers from urban
setting to understand the overall perspective of the health
care workers.
Deliverables:
 An education program to raise the awareness among the health care workers about
cultural safety. The approach undertaken while providing effective communication
training among the nursing professionals for cultural competence must be designed
in such a way that it addresses patient specific communication and healthcare
needs (Renzaho et al., 2013).
 The first part of the strategy towards training cultural competence among the
nurses via the use of effective communication skills will initiate with addressing
patient communication needs. It will be the role of the nurse to understand the
patient’s communication needs via checking the patient’s medical records or via
interacting with the family members (Gallagher & Polanin, 2015). Here specific
communication needs mainly highlights the use of preferred languages or any use
of the sensory or communication impairments. In order to train in this domain the
nursing professionals are required to be trained on languages other than English
and the use of proper non-verbal communication skills in understanding patient’s
communication needs or other health-related needs. Important non-verbal
communication skills upon which the nurses will be trained in order to again
cultural competence include use of welcoming facial expressions, proper use of the
gestures and body language, maintenance of proper eye-contact and responding to
every statement with a nod in order to establish connection. Use of touch is also
regarded as unique non-verbal communication skills under effective communication
(Ben-Nun, 2014). According to Kourkouta and Papathanasiou (2014) the use of
non-verbal communication skills helps in the establishment of the therapeutic
relationship with the patients and this in turn helps to improve the therapeutic
outcomes of the patient care while increasing the patient participation in care
process.
 Another approach of the strategy for effective communication training includes the
information of the men and women’s business. According to Montagu (2013), it is
important that the staffs working with the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
people to understand the concept of segregated practices like men and women
business in their culture. So the strategy will encompass training of a special
approach where the female Aboriginal service uses would be enquired if they would
prefer to be greeted and treated by a female healthcare professional. If this option
is not feasible then the concerned nursing professional would ask the female service
user about their preference regarding presence of their relative or partner during
the communication (O'hagan et al., 2012). The same gender appropriateness is
applicable for the men as well. In order to understand the gender based required
difference, health literacy will be delivered to the nursing professionals. This health
literacy will be given under community settings through interactive sessions and
power point communications. Providing proper health literacy will help the nursing
professionals to increase their knowledge about the cultural and the spiritual values
of the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders (Kourkouta & Papathanasiou, 2014).
Success Criteria: The success of the training program can be measured by the attendance of the trainees,

Implementation Plan Template
7210MED Cultural Capability Strategy
which can be recorded by maintaining an attendance register. The feedback of the
patients, which can be got by the conduction of feedback sessions taken from the
patients after a month or two. According Posavac, (2015), interviews and surveys can
be helpful in obtaining feedback from the clients, Furthermore the productivity of the
organisation at the end of the year can also be measured (Sachin Jain, 2013)
Resources:
What are the
resources required?
Training program to be held in community care settings or the primary care
settings in rural areas.
A trainer (Four registered nurses having experience in treating aboriginal patients), a
social care worker working with the aboriginal community, two aboriginal health care
workers (Aboriginal health care workers can also be taken in to consideration for a
better understanding of the aboriginal issues)
Tools: PowerPoint presentations, flyers and leaflets.
Linkages: Key performance Indicators like the number of hospital admissions, number of medical
errors and near misses and number of hospital readmissions.
IMPLEMENTATION
Assumptions Constraints Changes may give rise to conflicts among the
health care stakeholders. The aim of this training program might not be
acceptable to some health care workers.
What are the actions required to mitigate the risk based
on assumptions? The trainees will be informed about the aims of
the project beforehand and feedback will be
obtained from the trainees to understand their
mindset.
What challenges might arise? Conflict among the aboriginal and the non-
aboriginal health care workers regarding
concepts of cultural safety and privileges given
to the aboriginal people. Funding crisis. Since it is a rural care setting,
hence funding crisis might regarding the
provision of basic technologies like computers.
Scope: Change legislation relevant to the project, change
can be implemented in any one of rural clinic and hence
the problem cannot be addressed in the other clinics
placed in more rural areas.
Cost: high cost for the continuation of the training
program for 4 months
Schedule: Once in a week, for three months.
Quality: Dependent on availability of resources and skills
Time Frame & Milestones: Computer based strategies and trainings once in a week
for 3 months including fieldwork to aboriginal
communities.
Engagement Strategy
Stakeholders Who What are their
information needs
How & when will we
provide them
information about
the initiative
Clinical staff,
Organisational
management, funders,
consumers, etc
Registered nurses, Health
care workers, aboriginal
health care workers.
Exact number of
aboriginal population,
percentage of the health
care workers per
Newsletter, staff meeting,
executive briefings, Emails.