The Importance of Culturally Safe Health Care for Indigenous Peoples

This essay explores the concept of culturally safe healthcare for Indigenous peoples, emphasizing the importance of understanding their cultural, historical, and social contexts. It highlights the significance of 'connection to country' as a fundamental aspect of Indigenous identity and the detrimental effects of neglecting this connection. The essay discusses the need for culturally safe healthcare to improve health outcomes, particularly addressing issues like cardiovascular diseases and cancer. It examines initiatives like Birthing on Country and the role of healthcare professionals in providing culturally sensitive services. The essay references studies from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, emphasizing the need to eliminate power imbalances and promote equity in healthcare access for Indigenous communities. The importance of ATSI nurses and midwives is also highlighted as an initiative to help attain cultural safety for this community.

Title: Culturally Safe Health
Care for the Indigenous
People
Name of student
Unit
Date

•Connecting to country is an Aboriginal society
awareness strategy made to provide cultural framework
between aboriginals and the states teaching fraternity.
Teachers interact with the aboriginal students at community
level. Over a limited time of interacting with the people, the
teachers should learn and understand the cultural, historical
and social way of life of the Aboriginals

• This would help the teacher to master and be able
to explain the historic, social, economic and
political factors that continue to be a concern to
the ATSI community. The connection between the
Aboriginals and their country is their fundamental
pillar of identity though it is hard to explain it.

• Liddle (2015) thinks that connection to country
is important to the ATSI people as it is their
identity, it is their family, responsibility, laws,
legacy and their inheritance too.

• The failure to have an intimate feeling towards
one’s country is disastrous. In fact, the modern
constructs of identification brought about by
civilization have tried to scatter and dismantle the
strong bond existing between the Aboriginals and
their native land.

• This civilization has tried to overshadow their
culture, their sense of belonging, make them
overlook and forget their ancestors and their
stories. For this reason the Aboriginals have
sworn to fight to protect their culture, their land
and sense of belonging.

• Fighting for one’s country would help preserve their
culture; cultural safety. Which is integral in improving the
ATSI people’s health, would be attained. By attaining
cultural safety, the Aboriginals can access better health
care and better health results. Having more ATSI nurses
and midwives is an initiative taken to help attain cultural
safety for this community.

The Australian health system has laid down strategies
to ensure that health services are delivered without
racism and inequality. Working together with the
Aboriginals, they have been able to achieve an
appropriate, affordable, high quality and effective
health services (Congress of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, 2016).

•Cultural consciousness, sensitivity and safety among
cultures describe the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders’ (ATSI) healthcare framework that largely
depends on the health professional’s knowledge, skills
and attitude. Healthcare policies, levels of poverty,
organizational and system factors that limit the ATSI
people from accessing equity in health care

• These factors exists in the same environment
where practitioners’ abilities and the racism
levels inhibit Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander’s people from obtaining safe health
care (Freeman et al. 2014).

•According to Laverty et al. (2017),
cardiovascular diseases and cancer are the
leading causes of death in Australia which has
raised the need to provide a culturally safe
health care to improve the indigenous people’s
health.

• Canada, Australia and the New Zealand have
shown growing uptake of the cultural safety
initiative in health care. These governments
have that power imbalance between the patient
and the clinicians as the main barrier to clinical
effectiveness.

• The ATSI women think birthing on country is
of integral importance as it improves their
maternal and infant outcomes, binds them with
their land.

• The government therefore has a role to play in
this Birthing on Country model. It gives the
indigenous people a sense of cultural
belonging and create a strong bond between
them and the country (Australian College of
Midwives, 2014).

• When a child is born, the family and their
mother should be given the relevant support to
carry out their cultural aspects. There should
also be health care services which address the
indigenous spiritual, social, emotional, physical
and cultural needs (Taylor & Guerin, 2014).

References
Australian College of Midwives. (2016). Birthing on Country Position
Statement.
Freeman, T., Edwards, T., Baum, F., Lawless, A., Jolley, G.,
Javanparast, S. and Francis, T. (2014). Cultural respect strategies in
Australian Aboriginal primary health care services: beyond education
and training of practitioners. Australia and New Zealand Journal of
Public Health, Vol. 38, No. 4. Doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12231

Laverty, M., McDermott, D. R. and Calma, T. (2017). Embedding cultural
safety in Australia’s main health care standards. The Medical Journal of
Australia, Vol. 2017, No. 1, pp. 15-16. Doi: 10.5694/mja17.00328
Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. (2014). Health care and Indigenous Australians:
Cultural safety in practice (2nd Ed.). South Yarra, VIC. Palgrave
Macmillan.Congress for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and
Midwives. (2016). Cultural Safety in Policy and Practice Seminar:
Summary and implications. Retrieved from:
http://catsinam.org.au/static/uploads/files/catsin0006-strategic-plan-web-
wfyovzznvlno.pdf

Liddle, C. (2015). Why a Connection to Country is
so Important to Aboriginal Communities.
Retrieved from: http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-
and-love/real-life/why-a-connection-to-country-
is-so-important-to-aboriginal-communities-
20151021-gkf0nj.html