Informed Consent in Indigenous Healthcare: Challenges and Solutions

This presentation delves into the critical topic of informed consent within the context of Indigenous healthcare, examining its ethical, legal, and administrative dimensions. It begins by defining informed consent and its importance in healthcare, emphasizing patient autonomy and the right to make informed decisions. The presentation highlights the unique challenges faced when obtaining informed consent from Indigenous populations, including language barriers, cultural differences, and historical mistrust. It discusses the multifaceted benefits of informed consent, from ethical considerations to legal and administrative compliance, while also acknowledging the barriers and challenges that can hinder the process, such as misunderstandings, religious beliefs, and past experiences. The presentation explores the relationship between informed consent and the delivery of care to Indigenous patients, emphasizing the need for culturally appropriate communication skills and approaches. It concludes by offering personal reflections on the importance of informed consent and the need for healthcare professionals to develop action plans that are culturally sensitive. References from various scholars are included to support the arguments made throughout the presentation, providing students with a comprehensive understanding of this important topic.

Informed consent
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Introduction
 Indigenous population pose a significant risk to adequate care
delivery process
 Their stark differences that they reflect in their culture and tradition
that hinder the adequate care delivery (Hall, Prochazka & Fink, 2012)
 One considerable challenges when involving the indigenous
community is the informed consent
 This presentation will allow me to illustrate the aspect of informed
consent and how it applies to the culturally diverse population of
indigenous individuals (Grady, 2015).

Informed consent
 Informed consent is acquiring the permission from a patient
respectfully before conducting a healthcare intervention or
assessment activity
 It allows the professional to take permission before he or she can
disclose any personal information (Faden, Beauchamp & Kass, 2014)
 Hence, informed consent is also used as the implementation of an
ethical course of activity

Multidimensional benefits
 Informed consent has become of the greatest aspects of clinical
treatment which is practiced all across the globe (Castellano, 2014)
 It is a vital component of the contemporary medical practice
 It is associated with three overarching components of care delivery
procedure, legal, ethical, and administrative compliance (Faden,
Beauchamp & Kass, 2014)

Ethical benefits
 The patients have an autonomous right decision making and take
equal part in the establishment of the defined goals
 Informed consent automatically co-relates both of the aspects in care
setting or scenario (Yoshizawa et al., 2017).
 While asking for informed consent, patients are asked whether or not
they want to take part in the care activities.
 Helps provide the patient autonomous decision making power and
helps in re-orienting the care goal setting into a more patient defined
genre (Castellano, 2014).

Legal benefits
 Informed consent allows the patient to have a mandatory right to
claim the choices and preferences (Blum & Murray, 2016)
 the care professional taking part in the process of informed consent
will have the chance to allow the patient to have a priority basis of
decision making power to either allow or refuse any care activity.

Administrative benefits
 Informed consent has multidimensional benefits, and administrative
compliance is the next most effective benefit of this ethico-legal
component
 Informed consent is a written legal document that takes into
consideration that is a proof of all the parties being involved with the
procedure
 Also allows the care professionals to have an effective safeguard that
allows nominal fulfilment of the ethical and legal requirements of care
delivery procedure (Blum & Murray, 2016)

Indigenous aspects
 The challenges are growing in several directions which significantly
affect the health of the indigenous population, especially women in
the population.
 Informed consent is an inevitable requirement before any procedure
of diagnosis or treatment is undertaken in the clinical setting.
 It provides the liberty to every participant for deciding whether to
refuse or accept the recommended treatment.

Barriers and challenges
 language is one of the prime barriers for seeking informed consent from
aboriginal women of Torres Strait island (Orozco et al., 2017).
 The individual who signs the consent letter form does not have the full
understanding of the statement started in the form.
 Misunderstanding is another evident barrier due to incorrect language
translation by a translator.
 In certain cases, the decision is influenced by religious beliefs, and it becomes
an area of conflict for proceeding with accurate treatment (Varcoe et al 2017).
 False expectation and past experiences become massive barriers to treatment
procedure. Personal beliefs also influence the agreement of informed consent
 Lack of sound knowledge about the topic significantly influences their refusal in
giving the informed consent for proceeding with the treatment

Relation and discussion
 Informed consent is not just an ethical form to fill, it is a legislative
component, missing out on which can lead to professional issues and
can lead to penalizing the health care professional associated with it
(Yoshizawa et al., 2017).
 Aboriginals are associated with many language and culture oriented
barriers which further complicates the care delivery scenario for the
minority target patient group.
 A lot of activities are considered disrespectful and offending in the
aboriginal populations
 The informed consent provides the chance to the aboriginals to check
beforehand the aspects of care before agreeing to it (Grady, 2015).

Discussion
 The language problem and the aspects of care is undoubtedly a grave
concern
 It complicates the process of informed consent from the culturally
diverse patients (Blum & Murray, 2016).
 This allows health care professionals like us to understand what skills
need to be further developed
 informed consent process can be completed accordingly, even for
culturally diverse population with the help of this procedure
(Yoshizawa et al., 2017).

Personal reflection
 Informed consent is one of the most important ethico-legal aspects of
care delivery, plays into health care scenario for aboriginal patient
groups.
 It has given me a clear ideation regarding the need for more
culturally appropriate communication skills and approach of tone
 I have gathered a wealth of knowledge that would help me in the
future to develop the effective action plans
 The research carried out for the presentation had been mostly based
on Google scholar and the data gathered had been accumulated
precisely by me.
 This experience also helped me discover how to carry out evidence
based practice in the future as well.