Cultural Safety in Healthcare: Improving Health Literacy and Communication Effectiveness

This article discusses the concept of cultural safety in healthcare and the importance of improving health literacy and communication effectiveness. It explores the organizational position statement on cultural safety and provides strategies for ABC Hospital to enhance its healthcare services. The barriers and external influences that may contribute or detract from culturally safe practice are also discussed.

Cultural safety in healthcare

Table of Contents
Part 1..........................................................................................................................................3
Part 2..........................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................9

Part 1
Organization Position statement
A safety culture is defined as the outcome of competencies, attitudes, group values and
behavioural patterns that determine a level of commitment and proficiency of the health and
safety programs of an organization. The safety culture in healthcare organization is
determined by the level of health literacy and effective communication. The health safety
culture in ABC is determined by the level of health literacy and the communication
effectiveness between the healthcare staff and patients.
According to the organizational position statement discussed above in context of culture
safety in healthcare ABC can improves its healthcare services for its patients by improving
the level of health literacy among patients and communication effectiveness between the
healthcare service provider and recipients.
Health literacy can be defined as the degree to which an individual has the capacity to gather
process and understand the basic information related to health so as to make correct decision.
The health literacy is dependent on the factors such as communication skills of professionals
and patients. Another factor that determines the cultural safety level in ABC is the
communication effectiveness. The healthcare organizations that are culturally safe are
characterized by communication that based on the grounds of mutual trust (Gerlach, 2012).
The health literacy and an effective communication together make up an environment that is
safe in all the ways- physically, emotionally socially and spiritually. In a culturally safe
culture there is a shared respect and experience of learning together (Mogobe, Shaibo, &
Matshediso, 2016).
Cultural safety is about gaining knowledge, recognizing and respecting the differences
between individuals in a healthcare setting. Cultural safety is ensured by learning together
and listening in such a way that trust, collaboration, respect, personal dignity and an authentic

relationship in ensured so that the healthcare services can be improved . The healthcare
services can be improved by offering a better access to healthcare services and maintaining
healthier work relationship. Individuals have a right to feel culturally safe (CDNM, 2017).
Cultural safety offers a framework that examines the dimension of power between healthcare
service providers and recipients. The cultural competence is expressed with an effective and
respectful engagement of people in different cultures. This paper will focus on the
understanding the concept of Cultural safety with help of a case of ABC Hospital that is one
of a leading Australian Hospital that offers surgical and palliative care services. The hospital
has 88 beds along with on-site service and clinical specialities.
Part 2
Importance of position statement for providing a culturally safe healthcare
environment
The position plays an important role in outlining the necessity of providing health literacy
and effective health communication as the organizational strategy for delivering the culturally
safe healthcare environment to the patients. It will help in communicating the position of the
organization on the key issues of relevance for forming an effective healthcare system and
achieving a healthy Australia. Both these concepts are very important for the development of
a healthy Australia (The Arc, 2019). Health literacy is a very important concept and the
people must be made aware of the issues pertaining to health and how the small and simple
symptoms can cause huge problems for them. As it has been mentioned in the position
statement that the health systems have become complex today and thus, the common people
find it difficult to understand. This impacts their decision making pertaining to health. Thus,
for making them capable of taking effective decisions about their health, they need to be
made aware of the health systems (Commonwealth of Australia, 2014). The effective

communication is another element which has been provided weightage in the position
statement. In order to maintain the health literacy, it is very important that the health care and
its provisions are effectively communicated to the people. For this, the cross cultural
communication needs to be focused upon. The people different cultural backgrounds stay in
Australia and thus, it is important to break the cultural barriers and make people aware of the
healthcare system as the healthcare is a global issue.
The importance of effective communication in the provision of culturally safe
environment
Effective communication is said to have an important role in establishing a good medical
practice and allowing the healthcare professionals in providing patient centred care. The
effective communication allows the patients to provide the inputs in their healthcare and
allows them to participate in their own healthcare. Effective communication also allows the
patients to understand the side effects, complex multidisciplinary treatment regimens and the
causes and effects of a particular disease properly which also helps the medical staff to carry
out the treatment procedures properly with minimal interference of the families and the
patient. This communication becomes more important in case of treatments going on for
chronic diseases like AIDS, cancer and such others. Many western nations have even made
effective communication for the decision making and information transfer. The Australian
Council for Safety and Quality in Health has formulated an Australian Charter of Healthcare
Rights and this charter clearly mentions that every Australian has equal rights to get the entire
information pertaining to their sickness treatment (Butow & Baile, 2012). For this, they must
be informed well about these things so that they can make effective decisions for their health.
The culture, values, beliefs and personal characteristics must also taken into consideration
while communicating with the patients and their families. It includes the doctor-patient
communication which provides opportunity to ask questions about the prognosis to the

patients. The staff needs to be trained to ensure effective cultural communication and the staff
must be able to interact with the people belonging to all nationalities which live in Australia
(Butow & Baile, 2012).
Relationship between health literacy and effective communication
Health literacy is an important mechanism which allows the people to gain knowledge about
their disease, the issues related to it, medications and such others. The patient outcomes of
health literacy are influenced at three critical levels – access to healthcare, self-care and
health care provide and the patients. The health issues are more with people from the less
literate cultural backgrounds. The people who are not literate face the language and the
communication barriers with the healthcare providers. This is the reason why the minority
communities are less literate and aware about the health issues than the dominant
communications due to the language as the cross cultural barrier (Grant & Luxford, 2011). If
the healthcare providers are not able to communicate with the patients due to cultural and
language barriers, then the health literacy cannot be achieved. The health literacy also
involves the understanding and the analysis of the statistics which cannot be done by the
people who belong to different cultural backgrounds or belong to the minority communities.
This is the probability why the people of these communities approach the traditional healers
to get cured. Thus, it can be said that the heath literacy depends on the effective
communication as the effective communication helps in dissolving the cultural barriers. If the
cultural barriers are dissolved and the healthcare professionals are provided with efficient
training and development for handling such issues, the heath literacy can be established in all
the parts of Australia (Mogobe, Shaibu, & Matshediso, 2016).
The external influences that may contribute or detract from culturally safe practice in
the healthcare environment

Media plays an important role in shaping the perceptions of the people. Thus, it can also play
a contributing role in developing a culturally safe healthcare practice in Australia. One of the
most promising forms of media is the social media which can help in overcoming the barriers
of the cultural gap between the patients and the healthcare service providers. According to
Merolli, Gray, & Martin-Sanche (2013), the future for social media in the management of the
chronic diseases seems to be optimistic and the use of social media has also proved to
improve the patient outcomes (Merolli, Gray, & Martin-Sanchez, 2013). However, a few
researchers have also highlighted the negative impact of the media and news on the
development of health policy development. Nairn and colleagues (2014) in their study
highlighted that the mass media distorts the social as well as the health policy development.
According to them, the media discourses have been highly evident in the countries like the
USA, Australia, and Canada and they have played negative roles in context of health equity
and social justice. The dominant culture is one its reasons and only the dominant cultures are
promoted for getting health benefits by media. Also, the minority communities are promoted
in a manner that they marginalize their culture as well as disparage them as people (Nairn, et
al., 2014).
In order to become culturally safe ABC needs to focus on improving the health literacy and
communication between medical staff and patients. Fedrico (2014) indicated that health
literacy is one of the strong predictors of health status. An inadequate health literacy may
result in number of negative consequences such as poor self care, decreased likelihood of
receiving effective healthcare services, reduced patient engagement and satisfaction level.
The health literacy can be improved in ABC in different ways such as - open ended
questions can be asked from patients in context of prescription labels and the written material
that are given to them. The teach-back methods can also be used for improving the level of

health literacy in ABC. In this method medical staff and professionals can repeat the
information given to patients along with ensuring that they have understood what they are
told. (Berkman, Davis, & McCormak, 2010). The increased healthcare literacy will result in
improve healthcare outcome in ABC. This is because person’s responsibility to take care of
themselves and their family will increase. The health literacy will enable them in taking
better decisions related to their health. Further the communication effectiveness in ABC will
also have a direct positive impact on the healthcare outcomes in ABC. (Healthy People ,
2017). (Grant & Luxford, 2011)
An effective communication in ABC will lead to positive healthcare outcomes as the patients
feel satisfied with the information provided to them by the staff and it also has a positive
impact of health of patients. The clear communication with patients enables patients to
understand the process and medication in the most effective form leader better health
outcomes.
The two important factors that may help ABC in improving its health security culture as
discussed above are health literacy and communication effectiveness. Both health literacy
and effective communication will result in positive outcomes but there are number of barriers
that ABC may face while achieving health literacy and effective communication (Butow &
Balie, 2012). This section will discuss the barriers that ABC may encounter during the
process of improving its health literacy and communication. This section will also discuss
the strategies that can be adopted by ABC for encountering these barriers. While improving
the health literacy in hospital the major barriers are related to language and education and
literacy of patients or their family members. Differences in language and illiteracy are the
two major obstacle on the way of health literacy. In order to eliminate the linguistic barrier
ABC can hire freelance translators to translate the information in desired language. The
illiterate people can be educated in an easiest form of language or in a lay man’s language. In

this was the barriers if language and illiteracy of people can be managed in the most effective
manner. While ensuring communication effectiveness ABC may face the barrier of language
difference and physiological barriers. The differences in language of health staff and
professionals and patients will create barriers that may also lead to negative healthcare
outcome. In addition there may be physiological barriers because of ill health of patients,
poor eyesight, pain or any other form of difficulty. In order to eliminate the linguistic barriers
ABC should focus on hiring a translator that can translate the information given by patients
or professionals. The physiological barriers on the other hand can be encountered with the
strategy of providing information to these in different forms. For example: A patient who has
hearing problem can be offered information in written form. (AHRQ, 2019).
The healthcare system across the world is experiencing significant transformations. The
healthcare organizations in a highly advanced and competitive business environment need to
build a safe health culture for its customers. The two ways that can be used by ABC for
health culture safety are improving the health literacy along with communication
effectiveness in the hospital.
References
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