Culturally Safe Care for Aboriginals: Importance of Cultural Competence in Healthcare

This article discusses the importance of cultural competence in healthcare for providing culturally safe care to aboriginals. It highlights the cultural considerations and communication styles for treating native patients. The author shares their experience of attending a module that focused on preparing nurses to give culturally competent care to the native people and how it helped them to gain knowledge about the aboriginal culture and traditions. The article also provides an action plan for developing cultural sensitivity, awareness, and competency.

Running head: CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
Description:
We had the opportunity to gather huge amount of knowledge about the native people in
the nation of Australia from the unit module that was solely based on teaching the nurses about
caring for aboriginals. This module focused on preparing nurses in a way by which they can give
culturally competent care to the native people and help to develop their health condition. This
module had successfully helped me to gain idea about how the Europeans had colonised their
lands for a number of centuries and had exploited them in their own land. Lengthy periods of
mental, physical and financial tortures and exploitation had not only degraded their social and
economic status but also had hurt their self-respect and integrity. Thereby, this module had
helped me to understands that why gap in health status prevails among the indigenous people and
non-indigenous people. Previously, I only knew that they had poor economic conditions and
could not live better quality life. However, I never knew the main background for the occurrence
of their present heath disorders. I also came to know about many important cultural
considerations that I need to follow which I was never aware of before the module was attended
by me.
Feeling:
I was quite excited after coming to know about the ways of treatment and cultural
considerations that the nurses need to follow for treating native patients. I was happy and
respectful towards our university, as they had prepared a model separately for treatment of the
natives. I was feeling blessed that I could gather so many information about the natives and their

2CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
cultures. This would help me to develop my cultural awareness and provide culturally sensitive
care to them.
Evaluation:
The best part of the education module was that it would help me to treat native patient
(who would visit the healthcare centre with the urge of treatment for getting well and live a
healthy life) with cultural knowledge that would increase their job satisfaction. This would help
the purpose by which the nation is trying its best to develop and help the native people to come
forward and seek service from western healthcare systems (Ramman et al., 2017). Moreover, I
would be able to respect and care for the autonomy and dignity of the person which is one of the
most important ethical principle that every nurses need to follow in their practices. These would
protect the overall reputation of the organization and help me to develop my image and my
career (Couzos et al., 206). This unit has successfully taught me thee important principles of
culturally competent care for the aboriginals and had thereby helped me to develop cultural
sensitivity and overcome cultural biasness.
Analysis:
The module would help me to learn about different principles of their culture, their
traditions, their preferences and their inhibition. This module has thereby been successful to
make me extra careful when interacting with such patients. For these reasons, I went through
several evidence-based articles. Moreover, I also contacted my mentor and had detailed
discussion with him. All these helped me to realize a number of aspects that I did not know to be
important while engaging in communication with the patient. The first factor that I completely
was not aware of is that native patients believe in development of bonds and rapport before

3CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
initiating discussion about their own selves (Clifford et al., 2015). I did not have any idea about
the importance to rapport building with the native patient. Moreover, I had no idea that native
people do not prefer eye contacts as that made them feel disrespectful and rude (Thakrah et al.,
2015). While in western culture, eye contact is necessary for developing trust and showing the
opposite person that you are confident but in native culture, that shows disrespect (Aitken et al.,
2017). Therefore, here I made another mistake. The third point was while interacting, the native
patient prefer to be silent for long stretch of time. While in western culture, silence is taken to be
a negative aspects and individuals try to cover the gap, native people provides much significance
to silence while interacting (Bertilone et al., 2017). Similar such information was not known by
me and this module helped me to get ideas in a vivid manner.
Conclusion:
I believe that the module has not only helped me to develop my skills for treating the
aboriginals but has also helped me to develop knowledge about how to overcome cultural biases
and incorporate the principles of cultural competent with practices. Most of the aboriginal
community cannot trust the eastern healthcare system as they feel that their tradition would not
be respected and their cultural preferences would be overlooked. This prevents them from
coming and seeking helps from eastern healthcare systems. This would help me to contribute my
part towards their health development by conducting evidence based practices with them and
providing them with best care.
Action plan:
I will prepare myself well and develop cultural sensitivity, cultural awareness and
cultural competency. I will read all evidence based articles on how to provide culturally

4CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
competent care to native people. I will read internet articles and learn about their cultural
preferences and communication styles in addition to the module. All these would help me to
provide high quality cultural care to native people and would help them to develop better quality
life (Worall et al., 2016). The NMBA standards of ethics advise every nurse to develop practices
that follow ethical guidelines and consider all patients a sequel irrespective of their ethnicity,
class, creed and religion. Thereby, by following this code of ethics, I will make myself culturally
competent so that I develop a both verbal and non-verbal proper communication skill that aligns
with their cultural traditions. This would make them highly satisfied and they would develop
trust on the western healthcare system and would lead better quality lives. I need to be culturally
sensitive to their needs and requirements and never overlook their preferences. I should involve
them in decision-making and would respect their dignity and autonomy. These would help them
to develop their trust on me and reveal their concerns. Thereby I would be able to develop bets
care interventions for them.

5CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
References:
Aitken, R., Skinner, V., Clark, L., & Richardson, M. (2017). Evaluating organisational cultural
competence in maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Women
and Birth, 30, 5.
Bertilone, C. M., McEvoy, S. P., Gower, D., Naylor, N., Doyle, J., & Swift-Otero, V. (2017).
Elements of cultural competence in an Australian Aboriginal maternity program. Women
and Birth, 30(2), 121-128.
Clifford, A., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Tsey, K. (2015). Interventions to improve cultural
competency in health care for Indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
the USA: a systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(2),
89-98.
Couzos, S., & Thiele, D. D. (2016). Aboriginal peoples participation in their health care: A
patient right and an obligation for health care providers. Aboriginal and Islander Health
Worker Journal, 40, 6.
Lindstedt, S., Moeller-Saxone, K., Black, C., Herrman, H., & Szwarc, J. (2017). Realist Review
of Programs, Policies, and Interventions to Enhance the Social, Emotional, and Spiritual
Well-Being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Young People Living in Out-of-
Home Care. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 8(3), 5.
Raman, S., Ruston, S., Irwin, S., Tran, P., Hotton, P., & Thorne, S. (2017). Taking culture
seriously: Can we improve the developmental health and well‐being of Australian

6CULTURALLY SAFE CARE
Aboriginal children in out‐of‐home care?. Child: care, health and development, 43(6),
899-905.
Thackrah, R. D., Thompson, S. C., & Durey, A. (2015). Exploring undergraduate midwifery students’
readiness to deliver culturally secure care for pregnant and birthing Aboriginal women. BMC medical
education, 15(1), 77.
Worrall-Carter, L., Daws, K., Rahman, M. A., MacLean, S., Rowley, K., Andrews, S., ... &
Arabena, K. (2016). Exploring Aboriginal patients’ experiences of cardiac care at a major
metropolitan hospital in Melbourne. Australian Health Review, 40(6), 696-704.