Ethics in Nursing Assignment 2022

Running Head: ETHICS IN NURSING 1
Ethics in Nursing
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

ETHICS IN NURSING 2
Equitable access to care
Australians have equal access to healthcare to some degree. The extent of access to care is
determined by culture, economics, and environmental factors. That means that some people
accustomed to care while others are not. Inequity in health is present among the aboriginal
Australians and Torres Strait Islanders and the cultural barriers are important elements in
concentrating on inequitable access to care. Managers could play a role in identifying solutions
that will diminish ethnic disparities in healthcare. This is a great concern for managers since they
have to make sure that the indigenous people get full access to care. (Butts & Rich, 2019).
However, there is a cultural barrier which can result to crucial miscommunication between
parties of various cultures. Miscommunication leads to unsatisfactory health results of health
services among the Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Such issues bring out the
inequality among indigenous people. Different faith, beliefs, opinions and understanding in
regard to value, health and identity causes indigenous individuals to less willing to use
mainstream health facilities. Their beliefs which are fatalistic are associated with delays in
accessing free health checks, follow-up hospital appointments and cancer screening. Therefore,
cultural differences bring about unsatisfactory health outcomes among Aboriginal Australians
and Torres Strait Islanders (Windle et al.,2018). Besides, the government of Australia has put in
place the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to minimize health inequalities to enhance access to
health services.
The purpose of the scheme is to subsidize many prescription medicines so that all people are
allowed to have access to the required treatment prescription. For instance, asthma puffers are on
the scheme since they are a standard required prescription medicine. This will enable people to
acquire medication at a minimum price than benefit people regarding their health. This was one

ETHICS IN NURSING 3
of the strategies that the government used to reduce inequality in Australia. Though the
Australian government has made a significant step in giving healthcare to all individuals, some
categories are still disadvantaged in terms of accessing care. This encompasses Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI) and Rural and Remote and Remote living individuals. These
categories have inequalities among their socio-cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic
health determinants. These factors have a massive effect on the overall status of health, and the
steps towards these categories concerning access to health are improving slowly but are still not
enough. More emphasis requires to be put on the cultural distance between health experts and
the indigenous people. Differences in communication may result to misdiagnosis and
inappropriate solutions.
ATSI individuals usually have little access to health services and have health inequalities
because of insufficient facilities. This is because of various elements that causes disparities
among their culture, surrounding, and economic reasons (Newman et al., 2019). The factors
include income, levels of education, and geographical location that also ties closely with rural
and remote living individuals. There have been strategies that have been put in place to cater for
equitable access to care such as Royal Flying Doctors service that helps in care provision of
healthcare to individuals in remote areas where Aboriginal people live. There are various beliefs,
comprehension, and discussions regarding the value, health and identity cause the indigenous
individuals less willing to make use of mainstream healthcare facilities (Humphreys et al.,2018).
Their expectations are closely associated with delays cancer screening access, free checks, and
other hospital appointments. Culture plays a role in causing outcomes that are not satisfying for
services in healthcare among the Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Therefore,