HSC230: Cultural Safety Position Statement for Epworth Healthcare

This report presents a cultural safety position statement, focusing on the Epworth Healthcare organization in Australia. It explores the importance of health communication and health literacy in delivering culturally safe healthcare, emphasizing the organization's commitment to providing safe and effective treatments while respecting patients' cultural, personal, and social identities. The report outlines the organization's position on cultural safety, including awareness, respect, patient rights, and communication strategies. It delves into the rationale behind the position statement, highlighting the importance of effective communication, health literacy, and the impact of external factors. Furthermore, it addresses challenges in implementing cultural safety, such as personal, guideline-related, and external barriers, and offers solutions to overcome them. The report concludes by emphasizing the ongoing commitment to cultural competence and the benefits for both healthcare providers and patients. The report also includes a detailed bibliography.

Running Head: Cultural safety position statement 0
Cultural safety position statement

Cultural safety position statement 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Our position.....................................................................................................................................2
Cultural safety..............................................................................................................................2
Awareness and intense.............................................................................................................2
Respect.....................................................................................................................................3
Rights........................................................................................................................................3
Communication........................................................................................................................3
Rationale..........................................................................................................................................3
Importance of statement for providing cultural safe health environment....................................3
Importance of effective communication......................................................................................4
Health literacy and effective communication..............................................................................4
External factor..............................................................................................................................5
Challenges....................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................7

Cultural safety position statement 2
Introduction
Epworth Healthcare organization of Australia is considered in the assessment to assess
the importance of cultural safety. The organization provides surgical, medical and re-habitation
service and gives safe and effective treatment to the patients maintaining patient’s cultural,
personal and social identity. It is a not-for-profit organization working since March 1990
(Epworth, 2019).
This assessment is completed to acknowledge the importance of health communication
and literacy in part of the organization’s strategy to deliver culturally safe health. Organization’s
strategy of delivering culturally safe health includes effective communication, health literacy
factors affecting the imposition of the position statement in the organization.
Our position
Cultural safety
Within health care & cultural safety, our organization aims to show the impartial
distribution of power in the health care setting. For example, providing a safe environment for
community members to deliberate their concerns about risky cultural practices in health care; be
a way to identify areas for qualified services (Phiri, Dietsch, & Bonner, 2010).
Culturally safe environment and health care systems are sequenced as cultural sensitivity,
awareness about the culture, cultural safety and competency. Some measures taken by the
organization for safety and culture are as follows:
Awareness and intense
It is done to spread awareness and motivate the practitioners, to create in an individual’s
culture, and to provide better health care facilities accordingly.

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Respect
Respect provide for an indigenous culture by the members of the organization lead to
build more trust and confidence about health care provided. Respect is practiced by trusting
patients respectfully and by practicing polite & courteous behavior of staffs (Simon & Waters,
2009).
Rights
Equal rights provided to the patients along with the proper information to empower
patients of every culture & custom. There should be no racism or discrimination based on
anything (Phiri, Dietsch, & Bonner, 2010).
Communication
Communication between the health care providers and patients is an important factor to
ensure better understanding and better treatment. The patients can also feel culturally safe by
involving family members through communication. For example, patients and medical experts
come from different cultures. Proportionately, it may be involuntary outrage by mislaid clues or
delusion a cultural point of view. (Taylor & Guerin, 2019).
Rationale
Importance of statement for providing cultural safe health environment
In Australia, the quality standards and health safety are inadequate to secure safe care for
domestic patients and to get maximum care outcomes. In the health sector “business as usual,”
health care is considered as culturally not safe. It may decrease treatment fidelity or result in
complete diminishing. Top Domestic health department claims that, encouraging the possibility
of clinical care that is culturally safe care may largely contribute to domestic health care. Our

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organization keeps a more precise attachment of cultural safety within compulsory standards for
safety. Clinical care with improved quality is the factor that encourage the existing poor. Closing
the Gap tools related to health care delivery.
Importance of effective communication
According to our position statement, communication plays a vital role to provide quality
health care to patients. Behavioral, belief, attitude and biases analysis of patients is the key factor
of effective communication as it helps in delivering access to care and quality of it. By
considering precaution is better than cure, spreading awareness about the disease through digital
platforms is also a better way to decrease effect of the disease. For improvement, organization
frame strategic plan then executes it and evaluate to achieve cultural goals of competency
through continuously improving structured progress. In the present situation of challenging
health care environment, the meaning of illness should be explored thoroughly to measure
present and upcoming intensity of the disease on society. Survey and evaluation of different
regions where cultural may vary are necessary things. Providing patient-centered medical care
irrespective of their caste, creed and culture are key things in our position statement. Health care
crew is given proper precautionary measures to ensure safety of staffs in case of infectious
disease (brooks, manias, & bloomer, 2018).
Health literacy and effective communication
Health communication is the practice of communicating promotional health knowledge,
like public health campaigns, and between doctor and patient. Our position statement encourages
the propagation of health information and to inspire personal health choices by enhancing health
literacy (Natalia, Pagels, Kindratt, Foster, & Gimpel, 2014).

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Analysis of health communication seeks to improve communication policies and to inform
people about methods to enhance health or to avoid specific health hazards. Our organization
attempt to build audience understanding and knowledge of a health issues, impact behaviors
towards a health problem, show healthy practices, and demonstrate the advantages of changes in
behavior to public health results. Our statement supports a position on a health issue, grows
transaction of health aids, argues against misunderstandings about health. Communication can
help in quality health care systems that might help to approach the issues facing patients with
limited knowledge of health education (McTier, Botti, & Duke, 2015). They also bring into light
that, struggles to understand the needs of patients with inadequate health education should be
considered in the range of communication struggle confronting the patients and their family
members (Matthew & Osborn, 2010).
External factor
External factor plays a crucial role in the development of any workplace. It consists of a
competition, technical, economic, social, political, and legal aspects. As competition always
strives for someone to achieve better every time, with competition new policies are introduced
budgets are framed to boost the technology of the equipment. It also helps in innovating
something new and better than the competitor. Investors play an important role in any technical
advancement whether it is equipment or infrastructure. Socio-political aspects are taken into
account in our policies so as to do work ethically we ensure in our rules and regulation that no
serviceman is involved in bribery (Matthew & Osborn, 2010).
The necessity for quality and safety advancement actions permeate health care. Quality health
care is the point to which health services for individuals and populations raise the likelihood of
desired health outcomes (Aihw, 2019).

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Challenges
Several research stats that health care position statements are not very often applied
practically. For successful implementation of our position statement various barriers are
considered and execution of appropriate strategy is required to overcome them. There are 3 types
major Barrier types faced in implementing the position statement of our organization termed as
personal factors, guideline related factors and external factors (Peterson, et al., 2010).
Personal factors include physicians lack of knowledge and comfortability toward the
policies and their recommendations. it also includes lack of self-efficacy and skill set, outcome
and motivation. This barrier is reduced by continuing medical education. Regular motivation
programs are added to the curriculum. Guideline related factors consist of complexity,
accessibility and applicability and layout of position statement. To overcome more focus was
done on dissemination and position statement was made simple to understand. External factors
include lack of standardization and new protocols. It also includes resource related issues like
time management or heavy workload. To overcome new protocols introduced and
standardization has been done.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the assessment that encouraging and committing to safety and
cultural competence in medical practice is a long journey, with benefits for physicians and
patients. It also concludes that cultural safety is an important aspect of an organization and it can
be done by promoting health literacy and by revoking issues that comes in the way of cultural
safety. by considering cultural values in organizational policies and practices, the issues of
cultural safety can be quashed.

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Bibliography
Aihw. (2019). Cultural safety in health care for Indigenous Australians: monitoring framework.
Retrieved from Aihw.gov.au: https://www.aihw.gov.au/
brooks, l. A., manias, e., & bloomer, m. j. (2018). Culturally sensitive communication in
healthcare: A concept analysis. Retrieved from collegianjournal.com:
https://www.collegianjournal.com/
Epworth. (2019). Epworth. Retrieved from Epworth.org.au: https://www.epworth.org.au/
Matthew , W. K., & Osborn, C. Y. (2010). Health literacy and communication quality in health
care organizations. Journal of health communication , 102-115.
McTier, L., Botti, M., & Duke, M. (2015). Patient participation in medication safety during an
acute care admission. Health Expectations , 744-756.
Natalia, G., Pagels, P., Kindratt, T. B., Foster, B., & Gimpel, N. E. (2014). Health literacy, health
information seeking behaviors and internet use among patients attending a private and
public clinic in the same geographic area. Journal of community health, 83-89.
Peterson, E. D., DeLong, E. R., Masoudi, F. A., O'Brien, S. M., Peterson, P. N., Rumsfeld, J. S., .
. . Shaw, R. E. (2010). position statement on composite measures for healthcare
performance assessment: American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart
Association Task Force on performance measures. Journal of the American College of
Cardiology, 1755-1766.
Phiri, J., Dietsch, E., & Bonner, A. (2010). Cultural safety and its importance for Australian
midwifery practice. Collegian, 105-111.

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Simon, B., & Waters, C. (2009). Cultural safety exploring the applicability of the concept of
cultural safety to aboriginal health and community wellness. International Journal of
Indigenous Health, 6-41.
Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. (2019). Health care and Indigenous Australians: cultural safety in
practice. Macmillan International Higher Education.
wynia, m. k. (n.d.). Health Literacy and Communication Quality in Health Care Organizations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.