HSC230 Cultural Safety In Healthcare

"Cultural Safety and Competence are central to providing holistic health care."

Discuss cultural safety in relation to community care of indigenous OR culturally linguistic diverse communities in Australia. Consider one health care challenge for your chosen group to structure your discussion.

Delivering culturally safe care of the diabetic patient in an indigenous Australian community

According to McDermott et al. (2015), the health outcomes for the Aboriginals in Australia with diabetes in the remote areas remain poor with high level of modifiable complications, which could be decreased, with improved primary level of care under community health care settings. Clifford et al. (2015) are of the opinion that better primary level of care can be achieved via procuring the care plan in a culturally safe and competent manner. In relation to this, the Australian Government has launched The Australian National diabetes Strategy 2016 to 2020. The strategy has 7 different goals. The 5th goal of this strategy mainly aims in reducing the impact of diabetes among the Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Aboriginals residing in Australia. The Australian National diabetes Strategy (2016 – 2020) highlighted culturally safe care for diabetic people in indigenous Australian communities will help in the promotion of disease awareness along with reduction in the impact of the disease. This culturally safe care plan for diabetes control can be implemented via expanding consumer engagement and self-management along with an improvement of the workforce capacity. McDermott et al. (2015) highlighted improvement of the work capacity to provide culturally safe care to the Indigenous population can be done through Aboriginal health care worker.

McDermott et al. (2015) highlighted that the adults of Australian Indigenous origin with type 2 diabetes are approximately 10 years younger than non-indigenous population. They have poor glycemic control along with low levels of preventive uptake of healthcare service in comparison to the non-Indigenous adults with diabetes. A culturally competent care under Indigenous community health set-up will help to promote reduction in the diabetes-related avoidable hospitalization. The community healthcare workers contribute promote improved diabetes care and its outcomes among the high risk patients through effective-communication and culturally competent self-management support. Renzaho et al. (2013) stated that effective communication among the culturally and linguistically diverse population helps to increase the disease awareness. This increase in the disease awareness help to the Aboriginal population under informed decision making and active participation in the therapy plan this promote better disease management. In a culturally component community healthcare settings, the spiritual thoughts and beliefs of the Aboriginal people are not looked down upon and cultural tailoring of the interventions help to promote better disease outcome. The diabetes care under culturally competent community care settings lays one-on-one interventions with proper individualized assessment that promotes personalized care approach for the Aboriginal population with diabetes (McDermott et al., 2015).

References

Australian Government Department of Health. (2016). Australian National Diabetes Strategy 2016–2020. Access date: 3^rd October 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/3AF935DA210DA043CA257EFB000D0C03/$File/Australian%20National%20Diabetes%20Strategy%202016-2020.pdf

Clifford, A., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Tsey, K. (2015). Interventions to improve cultural competency in health care for Indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA: a systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(2), 89-98.

McDermott, R. A., Schmidt, B., Preece, C., Owens, V., Taylor, S., Li, M., & Esterman, A. (2015). Community health workers improve diabetes care in remote Australian Indigenous communities: results of a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial. BMC health services research, 15(1), 68.

Renzaho, A. M. N., Romios, P., Crock, C., & Sønderlund, A. L. (2013). The effectiveness of cultural competence programs in ethnic minority patient-centered health care—a systematic review of the literature. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 25(3), 261-269.