Reflection on Social or Health Issue: Nursing Assignment

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Nursing assignment
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Topic- Reflection on significant health issues in culturally diverse group of Australia
Reflection on feelings and thoughts through the sociological imagination template
a. Reflection on feelings and behavior related to the topic
The sociological imagination is a term given by C. Wright Mills which is the process of
analysing the link between an experience or issue and the wider society. Reflection on any
social or health issues on the basis of this template helps to establish connection between
social realities and public health issues (Giddens et al., 2016). In this report, the focus is on
using the sociological imagination template to determine the factors that contribute to
significant health issues in culturally diverse population group of Australia. This topic is the
focus of attention because Australia has been regarded as a country with multicultural
diversity. With the large influx of different minority groups in the country, it is necessary to
evaluate how the Australian health care system has evolved to address the health issues of
culturally diverse group. The report evaluates this by focusing on the element of historical,
cultural, structural and critical factors of the sociological template.
b. Historical factors
As a registered nurse, I have gained expertise in handling different types of patients such as
children, adults, and old age individuals. I had the ambition of working abroad and use my
professionals skills to provide quality nursing care to patient. I came from Nepal and since I had
lived in Nepal, my perspective about the reasons for inequality in different social group was that
that it occurred due to poor social class of patient. I was not aware about the different other

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causes of health inequality because I had never interacted with culturally diverse group before.
However, when I came to Australia and worked closely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people, I realized the reasons of significant gap in health outcome between indigenous
and non-indigenous population of Australia. Currently the population of the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people is about 2.8% of the total Australian population and several factors
like floods, famines and oppressive political regimen has been the reason for them to migrate to
other countries (Census: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, 2017).
Working in Australia also help me develop knowledge about the origin of Australian cultural
diversity and how the Australian health care system meets the needs of such a diverse population
base. In response to the rise in multiculturalism in Australia, several policies and strategies
helped to evolve the Australian health care system and embrace people from different cultural
groups. The Assimilation policy was one such policy that focused on providing necessary
training to new arrivals to adapt and learn Australian cultural practices (Jones et al, 2014). This
helped me too as cultural sensitive care training helped to understand the history of the
population groups and the reasons for different experiences of illness. Different in health
indicators of indigenous population was found to have links with their negative experience in hoe
countries too. Majority of people were found to have mental illness because of cultural shock and
separation from home and experiences of atrocities and poor lifestyles (Parker & Milroy, 2014).
c. Cultural factors
Culture or the patterns of belief developed in a individual while living in a society greatly
influences their health beliefs, perceptions and reasoning about the cause of illness and seeking
cure. The influence of culture on health is huge and difference between cultures in health

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professionals and patients lead to culture bias and conflict (Iwelunmor, Newsome, &
Airhihenbuwa, 2014). As my origin is from Nepal, I have found Nepalese people to belief on the
supernatural element for health, illness and pain. Hence, they seek spiritual intervention to get
cure to address their pain and suffering due to illness. However, such beliefs about illness is seen
only in people coming from low socioeconomic background and poor education (Boden, 2015). I
do not have the same belief like my fellow countrymen because high educational has helped me
to belied the scientific and biological theories about health and illness. While practicing as a
nurse in Australia, I also found that Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders held different beliefs
about health and illness which affected their patterns of using the health care services too.
Torres Strait Islander people of Australia are different in cultural and ethnic context. While
working in Australia, I got to know that they have a lot of similarities in the culture of
individulas in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.There are two communities of Torres Strait
Islander near the coast of mainland at Bamaga and Seisia. The indigenous population trades with
the people residing in Papua New Guinea and they are different in cultural aspects as compared
to other people living in Australia (Casey, Murray, & Kirk, 2016).They are different in their way
of living and have variety of cultures and religions. Individuals belonging to Torres Strait
Islander population are quite young as compared to the individuals who are non-indigenous
(Doolan, Najman, Henderson, Cherney, Plotnikova, & Smirnov, 2015).They also are human
beings and have the basic right to preserve their cultures and traditions. Young children who
belong to Toress and Aboriginal community also have the right to education during the phase of
early childhood. Children belonging to the Indigenous community are poorly educated as
compared to non-Indigenous children. However, while caring for them in hospitals, I observed