Nursing and Health Inequality among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in Australia

This assignment analyses how a registered nurse can shape their future working experience under clinical settings in community level. It highlights personal reflection, yarning cycle activity and effective communication with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to reduce health inequality.

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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According to the Australian Human Rights Commission (2018), the Aboriginal and
the Torres Strait Islander people suffer from health in-equality due to the poor social
determinants of health. The following assignment aims to analyse how I am going to shape
my future working experience as a registered nurse (RN) under clinical settings in
community level. The paper will initiate with my personal reflection through Gibbs reflective
cycle and then will highlight my three different weeks of yarning cycle activity and how
these activities helped me increase my involvement with the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait
Islander people.
While I was assigned to work on the subject of contemporary health and well-being of
the indigenous population in Australia, I was bit surprised. The first thing that came to my
mind was why a population which is barely civilised can gain such an importance that we are
required to conduct a study over it. My experience about Aboriginal population before
commencing this subject was completely different. I used to think that this group of
population are barriers towards modernization in Australia. Aboriginals or Torres Strait
Islanders suffers from unemployment and substance abuse and thus a burden over the society.
While learning more about this subject, a personal evaluation occurred within me.
Before I was to think that the aboriginals people, the people with darker skin are illiterate and
are not civilised enough to enter into the main race of the society. However, while learning
more about their culture, civilization and way of living, I gradually came to realization that
my though process about them was biased. Via going through the statistics I cam e to an
understanding that their deprivation, lack of proper access to the healthcare services and lack
of proper exposure and governmental support is the reason behind their lack of progression.
This analysis of their past history opened my mind and changed my perspective toward them.
I started developing a sympathetic corner for them and generate a tendency to know more and
work for them in order to reduce this health inequality among the Aboriginal population.

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The things which well badly is my biased attitude towards the Aboriginals and the
Torres Strait Islanders people. According to Ecker et al. (2014), biased attitudes of the non-
indigenous population are the reason behind the increase in the health-inequality among the
Aboriginal population. This biased attitude is the reason behind the social isolation of the
aboriginal people and this given rise to inequality. Health inequality and lack of proper
employment and financial support make them suffer from depression and thereby becoming
victims of substance abuse (Skinner et al. 2013).
The thing which went right is providing me with an opportunity to research and know
more about the Aboriginal community. These readings acted as an eye-opener. It helped me
to overcome from my pre-conceived notion about the Aboriginal population in Australia and
I gradually came across the actual harsh reality. I understood that inequality and negligence
from the society are reason behind their poor health status and health inequality. This positive
approach will help me to understand the health-related consequences about the Aboriginal
people. The overall positive approach can be improved further via indulging into effective
communication with the aboriginal population. This effective communication through inter-
personal communication skills will help me to understand their though process and hurdles in
experiencing health inequality. According to UTS Indigenous Graduate Attributes, it is the
duty of the nursing professional to understand the basic aspect of the gaps in knowledge of
the Aboriginals and act in a culturally competent manner.
In conclusion, I would like to highlight that at the before commencing the subject I
should have overcome my pre-conceived understanding about the Aboriginals and Torres
Strait Islander. This would help me to overcome my biased attitude towards them. The
positive feelings are I gradually overcame my biased attitude via studying in deep about
them. I could have transformed my overall experience further via indulging into effective
communication with the Aboriginal people. During the experience I learned about myself that

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I get easily carried away by the prevailing notion in the society without judging the whole
concept by myself. However, I one positive thing about me, I always attempt to study about
the actual scenario while required and this helped me to know the actual truth.
Thus the main priority areas that I am required to develop is to indulge into effective
communication with the Aboriginal people through working on my intrapersonal
communication skills. Developing my intrapersonal communication skills will help me to
interact with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a culturally competent
manner. This will help me to know more about their health inequality and about their health
status. According to Sharifian (2013) communicating in a culturally competent manner with
the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islander people help to generate person-centred care plan
under clinical settings and also helps to promoted informed decision making. The specific
steps that I will take in order to improve my intrapersonal communication skills is obtaining
effective communication training from an registered nurses under clinical settings during a
course of 6 months.
My predetermined notions about the Aboriginals have been changed
after my participation in the yarning circle with the aboriginals. The
yarning cycle for 3 weeks consisted of a debate concerning the subject- A
high incidence of alcohol consumption among the aboriginals, a home visit
to Judy (an aboriginal) to know about the culture and their experiences
and a group discussion with the aboriginals about the high prevalence of
the chronic diseases among the aboriginals.
First activity- Debate on the high prevalence of alcohol consumption
among the aboriginals than the non- aboriginal counterparts.

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There were 6 participants for the debate 3 speaking against the
concept and three speaking for the concept. As a participant, I was
speaking for the concept as I also believed in the fact that aboriginal
people are more likely to be addicted to the alcohol and which I thought to
be one of the reason towards their sufferings. As per Gray et al.,
(2012),the aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders are 1.2- 1.3 times
likely to consume alcohol at the levels that can cause health risks among
the Indigenous people and that the aboriginal men are more than twice
more likely to consume alcohol than the women. I have also found out
that alcohol accounted for an estimated 8.3 % of the overall burden of the
disease (Roche et al. 2015). While confronting with the person who was
talking against the topic, I came to know about the fact that alcohol use
among the Aboriginal people. I thought that the context is required to be
understood from the social and the historical context of colonization,
where it was the white Australians under the authority who were actually
the one to introduce the aboriginals towards Binge drinking (Sherwood 2013).
Second activity- visiting to Judy’s house
Visiting Judy’s house was another part of the activity, where we met
her family members and the got the opportunity to understand about their
culture. It is from them that we came to know about their concepts of
kingship and the story of colonization and how alcohol was used in lieu of
money, which led to the prevalence of alcohol consumption among the
aboriginals. We have also come to know how the dark history of the

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aboriginals are still affecting the youths who are falling prey to substance
abuse.
Third activity
A group discussion was conducted with some aboriginal participants as well as the
non-aboriginal participants regarding prevalence of chronic diseases among the aboriginals.
Previously I had an idea that the prevalence of the chronic conditions might be because of the
life style of the aboriginals and their health literacy. As per the data the aboriginal people are
disproportionately affected by the chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, cancer and
chronic kidney diseases (Sherwood 2013). While the discussion we came to know about the
real reasons behind the wide prevalence of the diseases. It is true that the health literacy
among the aboriginal people are low and they are less likely to get equal treatments in
hospitals. Hence, discrimination and racism was found to be the main reason for the low
health literacy and unequal care (Kelaher 2014).
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that having a proper knowledge
about the level of deprivation in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population
helps to indulge in effective communication skills with the Aboriginal population. This
effective communication skill is an important aspect of graduate nurse which helps in the
development of therapeutic relationships with the Aboriginal population. This approach is
again proposed by the National Standards for the Registered Nurses (2.4) which promote that
is the duty of the nursing professional to help the service users to participate in informed
decision making process with the organisational and management structures.

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References
Australian Human Rights Commission. (2018). Social determinants and the health of
Indigenous peoples in Australia – a human rights based approach. Access date: 8th October
2018. Retrieved from: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/speeches/social-determinants-
and-health-indigenous-peoples-australia-human-rights-based
Ecker, U.K., Lewandowsky, S., Fenton, O. and Martin, K., 2014. Do people keep believing
because they want to? Preexisting attitudes and the continued influence of
misinformation. Memory & cognition, 42(2), pp.292-304.
Gray D, Cartwright K, Stearne A, Saggers S, Wilkes E, Wilson M (2018).Review of the
harmful use of alcohol among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Australian
Indigenous Health.
Kelaher, M.A., 2014. Experiencing racism in health care: the mental health impacts for
Victorian Aboriginal communities. Education, 55(56), pp.8-3.
Roche, A., Kostadinov, V., Fischer, J., Nicholas, R., O'Rourke, K., Pidd, K. and Trifonoff,
A., 2015. Addressing inequities in alcohol consumption and related harms. Health promotion
international, 30(suppl_2), pp.ii20-ii35.
Sharifian, F., 2013. Cultural linguistics and intercultural communication. In Language and
intercultural communication in the New Era (pp. 74-94). Routledge.
Sherwood, J., 2013. Colonisation–It’s bad for your health: The context of Aboriginal
health. Contemporary Nurse, 46(1), pp.28-40.

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Skinner, T.C., Blick, J., Coffin, J., Dudgeon, P., Forrest, S. and Morrison, D., 2013.
Comparative validation of self-report measures of negative attitudes towards Aboriginal
Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Rural and remote health, 13(2), pp.1959-1.