Developing a Cultural Safety Position Statement: Japara Aged Care

This assignment presents a comprehensive cultural safety position statement for Japara Aged Care, an Australian aged care provider. It highlights the organization's commitment to social justice, integrity, inclusiveness, and excellence, emphasizing the importance of cultural respect in healthcare. The statement underscores the rights of patients from diverse cultural backgrounds to live safe, healthy, and empowered lives, with access to culturally safe healthcare services. The rationale behind the statement is discussed, focusing on the multicultural nature of Australia and the need for healthcare professionals to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity. Effective communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is identified as a critical component of culturally safe care. External influences, such as organizational climate, HR practices, and funding for training, are analyzed for their impact on cultural safety. The assignment concludes by discussing how addressing these factors can improve health outcomes for the organization's target clients, promoting patient satisfaction and engagement in the care process.

Running head: POSITION STATEMENT ON CULTURAL SAFETY
POSITION STATEMENT ON CULTURAL SAFETY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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POSITION STATEMENT ON CULTURAL SAFETY
Japara Aged Care Centre – Cultural Safety Position statement
PART 1:
Background of the organization:
Japara is a renowned aged care operator in the nation of Australia that runs across 44
homes in the nation. We provide round the clock residential care for people who are no longer
having the ability to live independent lives. We harbor one of the most experienced cohorts of
healthcare professionals to meet the needs of the aged citizens in the nation. Trained nurses as
well as specialist healthcare professionals try their utmost in providing high quality
accommodation. This care services are complemented by innovative and personalized care plan,
nutrition and lifestyle options. Japara undertakes a unique approach towards aged care and sets
up their main focus in exhibiting respect towards individuals. The organization inspires their
professionals in developing smarter as well as better designed homes. The organization had
appointed huge number of healthcare professionals ensuring that one-to-one time can be devoted
to each of the patients and to create personalized care plans for the individuals. We treat each of
the aged patients as a part of one large family and also place their best interests at the heart of
everything that is done for the patients. It has now become one of the most admired and loved
aged care providers in the nation.
One of the most important foundations of our aged cared facility is the culturally safe
environment. Japara upholds the values of social justice, integrity, inclusiveness as well as
excellence as the principle components of these values in practice. The healthcare professionals
here have a shared understanding of the cultural respect and provide culturally safe healthcare
services that align with the cultural tradition and customs of each of the patients successfully and

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respect their ethnicity, race and religion successfully. The healthcare organization advocates for
the implementation of the health service standards, which require a culturally safe approach and
thereby continue in providing advice to healthcare service providers and other key stakeholders
in developing a culturally safe working environment for the different patients coming from
varied cultural backgrounds. Moreover, the organization plays a substantial role by advocating
for the cultural safety in the nursing education and training so as to develop cultural competency
and cultural sensitivity that is required to provide vest quality care that aligns with dignity of the
patients and makes them feel satisfied.
The position of the organization:
1. Japara affirms that all patients from varied cultural backgrounds have the right to live in a
safe, healthy as well as empowered lives that would have strong connections towards
their culture and safety
2. Japara is also of the opinion that patients with varied cultural backgrounds should be
likely to access towards healthcare thereby achieving better health outcomes by accessing
carious services that would be respectful and culturally safe
3. Japara confirms that education providers to the workforce of the organization undertakes
regular training sessions, workshops as well as discussion sessions to ensure that the
professional become skillful enough to develop high level of cultural competency in their
skills and thereby exhibit cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural sensitivity and
cultural respect to the patients in the organizations.
4. Japara implements an organization wide cultural safety policy as well as practical
Reconciliation Action Plan that exhibits the commitment of the organization in
addressing the inequalities faced by ethnic minority groups and thereby to assist them

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through self-determination, removal of health disadvantages as well as elimination of the
racism.
The Aged Care: PART 2:
Rationale:
Why having such a statement is important for providing a culturally safe healthcare
environment?
Australia is a multicultural nation and harbors the comfortable living with different
migrants and refugees coming from more than 200 countries. Such people are seen to practice
over 115 religions and speak various languages accounting to for about 180 languages. The term
cultural safety can be referred to the braid understanding of the respect, empowerment, support,
identify and upholding of the human rights practiced. It is important for the nursing professionals
to ensure following of cultural safety framework while treating patients from varied backgrounds
for effective recognition of the power imbalances that are often found to be inherent in
relationships between recipients and healthcare professionals (Pauly et al., 2015). It is extremely
important for nursing professionals in healthcare centers to develop cultural awareness and
cultural sensitive to provide respect to cultural traditions and customs of the patients in the
organization. Richardson et al. (2017) are of the opinion that when patients from varied culture
feels that the professionals respect their beliefs, customs, values, language and traditions, they
are more likely to communicate honestly as well as freely with the healthcare professionals. This
can help in revealing much important information by the patients regarding their health and
personal life which can help in better development of care plan services meeting all their
healthcare needs. This would help in reduction of disparities in the healthcare a ling with

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improvement of patient outcomes. Culturally unsafe care services and environment in the
healthcare ward not only makes the patients feel disrespected, they also feel that their dignity and
autonomy is also not taken in consideration and this leads to complete withdrawal of the patients
from the care services planned for them. The patient’s alignment with the planned treatment
interventions decreases and their cooperation with the healthcare professionals decreases. Kellet
and Fitton (2017) are of the opinion that the residents would feel withdrawn from the care
services and would no longer be participative. Their morale would be affected along with their
self-esteem that would lead to development of stress and anxiety within them. These would have
negative outcome son health and emotions. Hence, healthcare professionals should ensure
maintaining cultural safety on the healthcare organizations for nursing that every patient from
varied culture is respected (Usher et al., 2017). Hence, the organization had put utmost
significance on ensuring cultural safety n the organization and had thereby published the position
statement to put much significance on the touch both to patients and to the employees of the
organization.
The importance of effective communication in the provision of culturally safe environment:
Effective communication skill is a critical component for ensuring culturally safe care for
patients. Although verbal communication is considered to be the most important and convenient
way of communication, non-verbal communication plays equal importance in ensuring cultural
safety. A number of benefits remain associated with culturally competent communication like
the increased likelihood of the establishment of the mutually positive as well as beneficial
relationship between the patient and the professionals. Moreover, Cherry and Jacob (2016) are of
the opinion that effective communication results in increased levels of self-empowerment,
ownership and self-confidence for the aged patients because of their developed capacity in

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understanding information, diagnosis, prevention, management ad treatment of the health
programs. Effective communication in a culturally competent manner reduces the likelihood of
errors and misunderstandings that remain related with overall healthcare procedures. Moreover,
it also reduces the rates of the medical non-compliance as well as discharge against the medical
advices. It causes better rapport development between the patient and the professionals when the
patient’s feels emotionally connected with professionals when the later can communicate in a
culturally competent manner (Garneau & Pepin, 2015). Because of this, improved level of
respect and reputation results from between the patient and the professionals. Although language
interpreters can satisfy the transfer of information in acute care wards, it might affect the flow of
care services in residential aged care homes as patients there stay for long time and requires
developing strong bonds with professionals to share their needs and concerns at everyday basis.
Hence, professionals should be knowledgeable about all cultures and the language spoken by
people in the nation. Moreover, non-verbal communication likes eye-engagement, use of silence,
managing of touch, management of time, concepts about family involvements – all vary from
culture to another culture (Parisa et al., 2016). It is extremely important for healthcare
professionals to have cultural awareness about all modes of communication preferred by
different culture and incorporate them in the care services that they provide to patients. This
would make the patients feel that the professional is culturally sensitive and knowledgeable
about their preferences and tradition and this would increase their participation successfully.

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The external influences that may contribute or detract from culturally safe practice in the
healthcare environment:
The organizational climate is one of the primary factors that can contribute to breaking or
making of a culturally safe place in the healthcare ward. Holland (2017) opines that every
organization strongly influences the organizational climate, which is actually the reflection of the
degree of the employee motivation. It is extremely important for the healthcare leaders and
managers of the organization to promote and develop an environment that encourages the
healthcare professionals to develop cultural safety and to respect the culture of every patient.
Those organizations which have been seen to put their focus and motivate the employees to
develop cultural knowledge can help developing a scenario where staffs do focus on ensuring
culture safety of patients. Thereby, having a position statement on cultural safety signifies the
importance of following the attribute of cultural safety in the organization. Another important
external factor that had been found to be indirectly linked with culturally unsafe organization is
improper actions by the human resource departments. Repo et al. (2017) opine that every
organization should recruit professionals from various cultural backgrounds. This leads to not
only innovation in healthcare wards but also helps in easily assimilation of different cultural
information among healthcare teams that makes the care process simpler for healthcare teams.
For example, Aboriginal health workers can not only provide a better amount of information
among the care team while attending a patient from aboriginal background but can also exhibit
and meet the right care needs. A multi-cultural employee cohort can enhance the efficiency of
the healthcare teams in providing care. Organizations snot promoting recruitment of people from
various cultures due to biasness irrespective of similar quality and knowledge in healthcare can
prevent providing culturally safe care. The third factor can be allocation of funds fr conducting

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training sessions among the professionals to make them develop the skills of cultural
competence. If the organization does not have the ability in allocating funds for such training
sessions, it can impact culture knowledge development among new employees, who are not
experienced enough.
How might this contribute to improving the health outcomes of the organization’s target
clients?
The three factors that can influence the development of culturally safe environment in the
organization for patients are improper organizational climate, cultural biasness in recruitment
procedure of HR department as well as lack of funding for education sessions for development of
cultural competency among the employees. The improper organizational climate that do not put
motivate the employees to ensure cultural safety while caring for the patient would make their
employees less bothered about the attribute. The employees would not feel empowered or would
not take up extra initiative to develop their cultural knowledge, awareness and sensitivity. Hence,
they would never exhibit such skills when their own organizational leaders and managers remain
laid-back about the attribute (Yeung, 2016). This would impact the satisfaction level of the target
clients making them feel that the employees do not consider respecting their cultural norms and
traditions. This would affect the morale of the patients making them withdraw from the care
process. Another factor is the HR departments’ cultural biasness in the recruitment process. The
other is lack of funding that would affect training process on cultural safety skill development.
All these procedures would make the healthcare teams incompetent to develop the skills required
for ensuring culture competent for which the patients of which the patients would be feeling that
poor services are provided to them with no acceptance of their cultural traditions (Cox, 2015).
This would not only reduce the participation of the clients but would also make the develop

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stress and anxiety and would affect their physical and emotional stability (Olukotun et al. 2018).
The reputation of the organization would be hampered in the long run.
What are the barriers, to implementing this position statement that might exist within the
organization? How might these barriers be overcome?
One of the biggest barriers that can be witnessed while implementing the position
statement is that there might be conflicting views among the healthcare leaders, managers and
the administrative systems. This could be overcome by undertaking proper conflict management
approaches by the organizations like extensive meetings through constructive feedback sharing.
The five strategies for conflict management would include accommodating, avoiding, effective
collaboration, compromising as well as competing. Another barrier can be resistance from the
employees (Kohlbry, 2016). They may feel that implementation of the position statement would
have to make them take up additional effort and timing to align with the position statements and
participate in raining process as well. However, effective communication by the change
management leaders and motivation from them can enable the employees overcome such feeling
successfully (Jeffreys, 2015).

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