Importance of Effective Communication and Health Literacy in Promoting Culturally Safe Environment in Healthcare

Running head: HSC 230 ASSESSMENT 2
HSC 230 ASSESSMENT 2
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HSC 230 ASSESSMENT 2
Part 2
Introduction
Cultural safety involves empowerment of the patient and the healthcare practitioner.
The main path of promoting culturally safe environment in the healthcare includes
participation, protection and partnership (Pauly et al., 2015). According to Pauly et al. (2015),
promotion of the culturally safe environment is mainly highlighted by the recognition of
indices of power inherent under any interaction and significance of inequality and disparity
within any relationship. Under the culturally safe environment, a healthcare professional is
aware that imposition of his or her cultural beliefs may disadvantage the healthcare service
users and thus act in accordance with the spiritual belief and cultural thoughts of the
healthcare recipients. The following paper is aims to analyze the importance of effective
communication and health literacy in promoting culturally safe environment in healthcare.
The paper also attempts to discuss the importance of nursing professionals as selected as a
target group for educating about effective communication and health literacy. At the end
paper provides detailed rationale of culturally safe environment and its relation in reducing
health inequality.
Importance of effective communication in providing culturally safe environment
Effective communication is an important aspect of human interaction. It can be
defined as a two-way process of sending and receiving messages. For the perspective of the
cross-cultural experiences, it can be said that the spiritual and ethic belief among the cultures
differ significantly. This difference in the spiritual and the ethnic background change the
requirement of effective communication. Under effective communication in cross-cultural
environment signifies use of both verbal and non-verbal communication skills like the touch,
eye contact, silence and gestures (Renzaho et al., 2013). Effective cross-cultural
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HSC 230 ASSESSMENT 2
communication skills are important in creating provision for culturally sensitive health care
environment under hospital and community settings. The two-way communication between
the indigenous and non-indigenous people, the clinical and the patients can be regarded as an
important provision in healthcare as it helps in understanding the culture and the history of
the patient (Renzaho et al., 2013). According to Thackrah and Thompson (2013), effective
communication under a culturally safe healthcare environment helps to increase the
likelihood of generating beneficial or positive relationship with the patient and the nurses.
Effective communication also helps to increase the sense of confidence or self-empowerment
of the Aboriginal patients and thereby increasing their capacity to understand the disease
related information, the process of diagnosis and the path of management. This helps to
increase patient’s participation in the care plan and thereby helping to improve the overall
health-related outcomes. This in turn helps to generate culturally competent environment
where the decision of the Aboriginal people is valued. Understanding about the therapy,
decreases the likelihood of misunderstanding while reduction in the rate of non-compliance.
All these further help to improve health related outcomes while promoting culturally safe
environment. Effective communication also helps to improve respect and reputation among
patient and the healthcare professionals (Queensland Health 2012).
Importance of health literacy in providing culturally safe environment
Health literacy is recognised as a significant influence on the quality and safety of
healthcare and as important determinants of health. It is defined as the collection of skills and
knowledge that are required to understand and to use information associated with the health-
related issues like substance abuse, disease prevention, treatment and safety. Proper health
literacy of the healthcare professionals helps to increase the domain of fundamental literacy,
science literacy, civic literacy and cultural literacy (Lowell, et al., 2014). Under these, civic
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