Importance of Cultural Safety, Self-Determination, and Collaboration
The collaboration, cultural safety and self-determination are central to ensure the health of people of Aboriginal as well as Torres Strait Island. The health of the Aboriginal people not only signifies physical wellbeing of a person but also implies the cultural emotional and social welfare of the total community where each person is capable of accomplishing their complete potential as humans and bringing complete wellbeing of the community. The essay will consider the concepts of collaboration, cultural safety and self-determination as a health service provider in the context of three components. The three components are interactions with Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families and advocacy for health service delivery which ensures healthcare for Aboriginal people and people of Torres Strait Island and advocacy activities that will contribute to close the gap.
As a nurse, cultural safety can help to interact with the Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families. The cultural safety forms the base for patient-centered care as well as professional advocacy role of the nurse (Bailie et al., 2019). I have realized that culturally safe interaction helps to improve the health outcomes of Aboriginal patients. I came to know that culturally secure communication also removes the barriers to clinical effectiveness that arise from inherent imbalance powers between me, the Aboriginal patients and their families.
The cultural safety is the experience of the recipient of care. I can use cultural safety since I found that the Aboriginal patients and their families feel safe, culturally safe healthcare interactions gets involved with the changes to healthcare services. The culturally secure communication can be also helpful for me to communicate with the Aboriginal health workers for reducing the disparities between the Aboriginal health workers and me.
The self-determination of the Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families can help me to interact with them. It can improve my communication with them, and they can also get a better understanding of the processes and systems of my hospital. Their self-determination during our interaction can also assist me in making them understand healthcare compliance and literacy with care plans and treatment programs. The self-determination is one of the perspectives of the Aboriginal people.
The patients and the families have the right to refuse their treatment if they feel that the treatment cannot be beneficial for them. But as a nurse, I think that this same self-determination can make them feel about interacting with me and know more about their illnesses and their treatments. As a nurse, I have a moral obligation to support, preserve and protect the self-determination of the Aboriginal patients and their families in concerns connected with their health as well as well-being. I also respect the self-determination of the Aboriginal health workers regarding their health-related decisions.
Influences on Healthcare Practice with Aboriginal Patients and Health Workers
The concept of collaboration can facilitate me to communicate with Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families. The partnership with Aboriginal health workers can assist me in interacting and taking appropriate healthcare decisions for the Aboriginal patients. It can help to understand the perspectives of the Aboriginal patients while making decisions for them. Collaboration can help me to interact effectively with the Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families effectively and build relations for planning, implementing and evaluating safe care and contributing to the health of the Aboriginal patients. Collaboration helps to develop better relations and further to better understanding (Beks et al., 2018). This collaboration can be beneficial for me for less preventable errors, improved patients outcomes, reduced costs of healthcare as well as improved relations with Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families.
The collaboration, cultural safety and self-determination might help me to improve healthcare services to the people of Torres Strait Island and Aboriginal individuals. The culturally competent activities might include implementation of culturally safe framework like small or symbolic gestures, deferring to the patients and families, anticipating barriers for accessing, the involvement of family and collective decision making to build partnerships, share power and make a decision in delivering healthcare services to the people of Torres Strait Island and Aboriginal individuals (Smith, Fatima and Knight, 2017). The culturally safe care can emphasize on my importance as a nurse for considering values, assumptions and background of myself and my patients for providing relational, holistic and conscientious care.
The self-determination activities might include making choices and considering the rights of the patients to make healthcare plans and treatments for taking care and treating the Aboriginal patients ((Davy et al., 2016). These activities can help me in making choices as well as decisions regarding the level and types of medical care the patients want to refuse or accept when the patients will not be able to take those decisions because of their illness.
The collaborative activities may include collaborating with the Aboriginal health workers such as nurse co-workers, doctors as well as other health professionals for improving the health of Aboriginal peoples (MacDonald and Steenbeek, 2015). My effective collaborative activities can encourage the Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families to become active participants in the process of the treatment which further can promote improvements in the experiences of the patients, effective usage of resources, the safety of the patients and higher quality outcomes.
Activities to Ensure Healthcare Delivery for Aboriginal Patients
I can consider taking population health advocacy activities for Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families to close the gaps. These activities can contribute to the equitable health outcomes for all the people of Torres Strait Island and Aboriginal individuals. The population health advocacy will be focused on actions for improving the overall health of the community (Gwynne, Jeffries and Lincoln, 2019). I can integrate this advocacy in the daily activities since this advocacy can help me to provide a credible voice to advocate the health issues of the Aboriginal people on the basis of cultural safety, self-determination and collaboration. The activities that can be included in the population health advocacy are:
- Contribution to health-related development initiatives of the entire community by partnering with the community groups
- Undertake of research for collecting useful health-related information about the Aboriginal community
- Participation in campaigns against health-related issues of the people in the Aboriginal community
- Collection of evidence which can show the impacts of the government as well as other strategies on the health of the Aboriginal people
- Engagement in political actions for promoting effective health-related policy development of the Aboriginal community
Conclusion
The essay considered the impacts of cultural safety, self-determination and collaboration on the health of the people of Torres Strait Island and Aboriginal individuals. These three factors were discussed in the context of interactions with Aboriginal health employees, Aboriginal patients and their families and advocacy for health service delivery which ensure health for people of Torres Strait Island and Aboriginal individuals and advocacy activities which will contribute to close the gap. In the first component, it reflected the influence of the three factors on the healthcare practice with the patients, families and health workers of the Aboriginal community. In the second component, the activities of the nurse based on the three factors were explained to make sure the healthcare of the Aboriginal people. In the third component, population health advocacy activities have been considered for the health care of ensuring Aboriginal people to close the gaps.
References
Bailie, J., Laycock, A., Matthews, V., Peiris, D. and Bailie, R., 2019. Emerging evidence of the value of health assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the primary healthcare setting. Australian journal of primary health, 25(1), pp.1-5. Retrieved from: https://www.publish.csiro.au/PY/PY18088
Beks, H., Binder, M., Kourbelis, C., May, N., Clark, R., Hudson, K. and Versace, V., 2018. Geographical analysis of evaluated chronic disease programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the primary healthcare setting: a scoping review protocol. JBI database of systematic reviews and implementation reports, 16(12), pp.2268-2278. Retrieved from: https://journals.lww.com/jbisrir/Fulltext/2018/12000/Geographical_analysis_of_evaluated_chronic_disease.5.aspx
Davy, C., Cass, A., Brady, J., DeVries, J., Fewquandie, B., Ingram, S., Mentha, R., Simon, P., Rickards, B., Togni, S. and Liu, H., 2016. Facilitating engagement through strong relationships between primary healthcare and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health, 40(6), pp.535-541. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1753-6405.12553
Gwynne, K., Jeffries, T. and Lincoln, M., 2019. Improving the efficacy of healthcare services for Aboriginal Australians. Australian Health Review, 43(3), pp.314-322. Retrieved from: https://www.publish.csiro.au/ah
MacDonald, C. and Steenbeek, A., 2015. The impact of colonization and western assimilation on health and wellbeing of Canadian Aboriginal people. International Journal of Regional and Local History, 10(1), pp.32-46. Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/2051453015Z.00000000023
Smith, K., Fatima, Y. and Knight, S., 2017. Are primary healthcare services culturally appropriate for Aboriginal people? Findings from a remote community. Australian journal of primary health, 23(3), pp.236-242. Retrieved from: https://www.publish.csiro.au/PY/PY16110
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