Barriers to Equitable Healthcare Access for Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders

PSYCHOLOGY
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Background of the study:
Globally, inequalities in health and lack of optimum care and the treatment of the
susceptible groups have always been a topic of debate among the nursing organization, health
care providers and the researcher. In Australia, the aboriginal people are the vulnerable
population that experiences a higher number of equalities then their non-aboriginal counterparts.
While the inequalities in the health and social well-being for the vulnerable group persists, and
the current debate is what the nurses are doing about them (Li, 2017).
According to Durey and Thompson, (2012) health disparities in access to the treatment
occurs in most of the major illness including cancer, cardiovascular illness, oral health and
kidney diseases. As per the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), it has been found that the life
expectancy of the aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islander is estimated to be 11.5 years less than
that of the non-indigenous counterparts for the males and 9.7 years lower among the females
(ABS, 2012). The rural and remote geographical conditions along with the social economic
differences is one of the main reason for an unequal access to health care. The indigenous
population has been found to be experiencing a substantially high rate of mortality in infant and
child, low birth weight perinatal mortality and standardized rates of death. It is necessary to
narrow down the gaps. It is necessary to ensure that everybody reaches their full potential to
health through an unbiased and barrier-free access to health care facilities, regardless of the
circumstances and social positions (Indigenous Australians Data, 2015).

Li, (2017), have stated that cultural barriers are important factors for addressing the aboriginal
health inequity. Cultural barriers in the health workplaces can be refereed to any kinds of
obstacles that an individual might face including the differences in languages, the medical
procedures and the practices, or concepts of sexuality and gender. These barrier can lead to
uneven health among the aboriginal people in Australia. As per the literatures it has been found
that different faith, beliefs, understanding and the interpretation of the values, identity and health
makes the indigenous people less willing to utilize the mainstream health care facilities. These
fatalistic beliefs are closely related to delays in accessing free health checkups, hospital follow
ups. It is known that language is the prime component of the culture and ineffective
communication has led to drastic failure in the health outcomes. Although the health care system
is considered to be the most refined health care system, yet it adds to very little benefits if the
patients and the health care providers do not get the chance to communicate. According to
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).(2012), Northern territory of Australia, contains the largest
number of aboriginal population and only 2.1% of them speak English. Thus, language and
cultural incongruities challenge equal access to health care. This is because, the indigenous
people use more than 100 dialects. Cultural identity can be referred to as people’s fitting to a
group. Physical and biological variances such as skin color might prevent the aboriginals from
actively participating in the treatment. However, it has been found that people rely upon those
who are from the same nation, same creed and from the same societal class, ethnicity and also
share the same physiological characteristics. Another rarer but important issue is that some of the
health care professionals believe in certain cultural stereotypes of the Aboriginal Australians and
Torres Strait Islanders. In a survey conducted by Jennings, Spurling and Askew, (2014), it has
been found that low staff motivation, low confidence about specific roles and cultural

incompetency contributes to particular low rates of health care assessments. Conventional
frameworks of the health population implicates a range of environmental, social and economic
factors as the main determinants of health. However, there are several contemporary and
historical factors like discrimination, dispossession, that are uniquely expressed by the
indigenous population. The way by which racism affects health, are multifaceted and complex,
for all the populations (Priest et al., 2013). Poor health in childhood and access primary health
care services is linked to the racism. It has been found that racism is associated to mental health,
sleep difficulties, asthma and obesity (Shepherd et al., 2017). In order to address the problem of
unequal access to health care, the Australian government has introduced approaches like
Indigenous advancement strategy, Indigenous Australians Health Program, families and
communities program, home interaction program and several other policies (Indigenous
Australians Data, 2015). However, the effectiveness of these strategies are questionable as the
problem of health care discrimination, still persists. Moore et al., (2017) have stated that this can
be due to the lack of an indigenous voice. Racial discrimination is still seen among the health
care professionals.
Accessing primary health care services is much more complex than locating a service,
close to the endogenous communities. Access to the primary health care services are often
confined to the spatial factors like the distance and the location, using the quantitative data
(Priest et al., 2013). As stated above, there are several initiatives that has been taken to close the
gap of an unequal health care access. Hence, in order to understand the gaps left and decide the
approaches for equal health care facilities it is necessary to understand the perception of the
indigenous Australians, about, the challenges that they face, while assessing health care services
(Griffiths et al., 2016).