Cultural Security for Indigenous Patients | Essay

Running head: CULTURAL SECURITY FOR INDIGIENOUS PATIENTS
CULTURAL SECURITY FOR INDIGIENOUS PATIENTS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

CULTURAL SECURITY FOR INDIGIENOUS PATIENTS1
Indigenous people in comparison to the other citizens of Australia suffer from various
diseases and the mortality rate of the indigenous people is high despite of the attempts of
governments trying to combat the issue and provide the indigenous people with proper
medical care and facilities. One of the major reasons of this issue is the lack of cultural
security which one fails to provide to the indigenous people.
According to scholars, many indigenous and aboriginal people, accessing health care
facilities lead to physical as well as emotional discomfort and one of the major reasons for
this because cultural security has not been an essential and vital part in the system or process
of healthcare (Coffin, 2007). Cultural security is defined as the philosophy and the way one
operates to ensure groups and individuals are treated in regards to the different cultural needs.
I believe that as a future healthcare professional I need to think of how I can create
cultural security so that I can provide quality services to the indigenous people who have
been having difficulty in accessing healthcare despite of the establishment of the new
healthcare facilities. McCormack, Mohammed & O'Brien, (2001) states awareness about the
indigenous cultures are highly important to provide proper medical facilities. I would thus
like to be aware of the cultural aspects of the indigenous people to work by keeping the
aspects in mind. For example, indigenous male and female are not comfortable in being
together in the same room thus would like to look into the matter and convey this information
in order to create different waiting rooms and departments in respect to the different gender.
According to scholars, there often becomes a gap in the treatment of the indigenous
people because of cultural differences and difficulty in communication, due to this the
indigenous people fail to explain the symptoms and the difficulty they are facing to the
healthcare professionals and this barrier leads to not detecting the disease in time (Holman,
2005). This has detrimental effects on the health of the indigenous and the aboriginal people