Reflective Journal on Cultural Competence for Indigenous People

Running head: REFLECTION JOURNAL B
REFLECTION JOURNAL B
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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REFLECTION JOURNAL B
Introduction:
It is the duty of nursing professionals to engage with patients as individuals in a culturally
safe as well as respectful manner. This is associated with fostering open and honest professional
relationships and adhering to the different obligations about privacy and confidentiality (Gwynne
& Lincoln, 2017). Nurses need to develop cultural competency skills to provide respectful and
high quality care to Indigenous people. This assignment would be a reflective piece that would
be using the 4-R framework to reflect on the learning throughout the course and how it would be
applied to future practices.
Reporting:
Throughout the courses, I got an excellent opportunity to develop a detailed idea about
the concept of cultural competence and the ways it needs to be practices in the real-life scenarios
while treating Indigenous people. The detailed discussion carried by our mentor helped us
develop idea about the health gap that exists between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous
people. The mentors discussed various factors that contributed to the health gap. I was quite
surprised to see that racism, discrimination, and stigmatization were some of the governing
factors that prevent Indigenous people from getting services from the western healthcare system.
Initially, I was culturally biased and I used to think that they do not take care of their health
because they are reluctant and careless about their lives. However, the lectures made me realize
that cultural incompetency by the healthcare professionals in their practices as well as racism and
stigmatized behaviors are other factors that prevent Indigenous people from getting services.
Inaccessibility to healthcare services have been noted as one of the most crucial social
determinants of health associated with poor quality health and presence of health gap between

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REFLECTION JOURNAL B
the two cohorts (Power et al., 2016). Cultural incompetency is one factor that leads to such
inaccessible health services for Indigenous people and hence, I have developed the knowledge
that I have to develop cultural competency in ways by which I can provide healthcare services to
Indigenous people that would align with their expectations and make them feel respected.
Relating:
During the time of placement, I got the opportunity to work with experienced seniors. I
remember of one such incident where I felt that the Indigenous service user who came to seek for
the service had not been attended or treated respectfully. At that time, the senior nurse was
entirely unaware about the cultural conditions of the Indigenous people and the ways Indigenous
people need to be communicated with. I felt that the nurse was culturally biased and exhibited
judgmental behavior. One of the sentence she used was “I do not understand why all the
aboriginals are alcoholic....you need to know that tobacco use and alcohol consumption are
injurious to health”. This statement was not only insensitive but generalized all Indigenous
people as alcoholic, which affected the self-esteem of the Indigenous patient. After attending the
class lectures, I developed great amount of knowledge, which now helped me to identify the
mistakes that were made by the nursing professional while treating Indigenous people. Every
nursing professionals need to develop cultural awareness and cultural knowledge about the
cultural inhibitions, preferences, traditions, customs and communication style of the Indigenous
people in order to provide quality care to the patients that satisfies them. Indigenous people have
specific communication mannerisms, which are quite different from western healthcare systems.
They do not prefer eye contact as this is considered disrespectful for them (Bennett et al., 2018).
Moreover, they are not comfortable by touch and similar gestures from strangers unlike that of
the western people. It is also seen that they prefer long periods of silence during communication,