Access To Health Care For Australian Cultural Groups

Australian Aboriginal Culture

Discuss about the Access To Health Care For Australian Cultural Groups.
 

Health care has improved the societal living standards by ensuring that all health problems are attended to in the best why possible. Through the department of health in the government, every location is considered in the improvement of the health standards to provide better service to the community. Every health problem identified is dealt with in the best way possible by the qualified doctors. Cases that cannot be solved through the capabilities of the national health problem, the international health bodies are consulted to ensure that cases like cancers receive the best care. Although the ministry of health in collaboration with the private sector are trying to achieve their best in providing best health care, some challenges are always experienced by the citizens. Due to the increased population, the Constitution has supported the private sector to indulge into the sector to improve the service provisions by providing solutions to medical issues experienced.

The health care systems have been improving from time to time to make sure that there, not medical problems are left undissolved. Although the government among other groups might view the provision of healthcare as ethical, there might be issues with balancing the cultural beliefs and accessing health care in the community. For example, a specific cultural group might be believing that people should not be accessing health care, rather they should be healed through their traditional methods (Guzys and Petrie, 2013). People with different originalities inhabit the Australian state. These cultures include the Australian Aboriginal and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse communities (CALD). Therefore, this paper will focus on barriers experienced by both cultures in access to health care and the possible strategies to be used in improving the services.

The Aboriginal culture in Australia consists of people whose origin is based on the Australian country, and their practice and beliefs are based on Dreamtime theory. There are several barriers to access to health care for the Aboriginal culture in Australia.  These problems are highly experienced by people living in most remotes areas in the country. The barriers have been observed through various research works conducted by the government among other independent bodies. The main barriers affecting the sufficient access to health care among the aboriginal culture include language and communication, telecommunications, service providers’ trust and transport services (Durey et al., 2013). 

Research that was funded by the government was conducted in 2008 to check whether the aboriginals spoke a language that could be understood by their equivalent service providers. This was a government idea to check how efficient were the services offered by the government to the citizens, especially to the field of health (Kunitz and Brady, 2010). The national language in Australia is English, but some people do not understand or speak the language because of lack of knowledge. Based on the research results, around 13% of the Aboriginal culture had another main language other than the national language. Rather, the main language in some localities is not English, which made it difficult to communicate with the health professionals. Amongst this percentage, 46% were perceived to originate from the remote areas in the country, and 2% were from urban areas. Further, the results showed that around 15% of these people were not in a position to communicate in English. For the people of ages 55years and above had the highest percentage (24%) of people who could not communicate in English.  This indicated that the government had a great task to solve the societal problem (Blackwell, 2013).

Barriers to Health Care for Aboriginal Culture

There was a great difference in percentages between the people who were connected to the internet between the residents of remote and non-remote areas. Based on research conducted by National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS), 98% of the aboriginals had access to telephones regardless of the type of phone. However, 40%, 20%, and 19% used home landlines, public phones, and others respectively.

Figure 1: Phone usage among the remote and non-remote aboriginal residents (Abs, 2010)

Trust is a paramount element that is factored in the service industry. The doctor should trust their patients in cases of requests for services otherwise the quality of service will be low. The residents should also trust the local hospitals and the workers to ensure that they do not perceive negative thoughts. A higher level of trust will mean that every person can seek medical assistance from the doctors at any time (Liaw et al., 2011). Based on trust study conducted among the aboriginals, some people stated they had trust issues with the doctors and the hospitals. However, a larger percentage was ok with the number medical centers and the health practitioners (Henderson, Kendall and See, 2011).              

Figure 2: Trust among the aboriginal culture (Abs, 2010)

In some localities, the distance from home places to the medical centers required an efficient means of transport. It was observed if a person perceived an illness, it took a lot of time before medical help could be acquired. Due to the insufficiency in transport services, they could not access the health services easily whenever there was a need. Around 66% of the aboriginals in Australia could access means on transport any time they need, either public or private. However, statistics showed that only 7% were able to obtain transport services on emergencies, which means people who incurred emergent medical cases had high probabilities of survival. Around 32% of the people from remote areas who are unable to access transport services when needed among the aboriginal culture. These statistics shows that there is some significant percentage of individuals who are not able to access transport services when needed (Durey et al., 2013).

Some strategies are supposed to be practiced to avoid the effects of the barriers in the society. The strategic practices should be focused on providing remedies to the existing societal problems. Firstly, because the community experiences an issue in communication, the government is supposed to educate people from these localities to become doctors so that they can efficiently serve the community. Otherwise, they can employ translators who will help people who cannot communicate in English effectively. These are some of the remedies for the language and communication barriers (Larson et al., 2011).

Language and Communication

Availability of telecommunication services helps people be informed about the changes in the technological world. Due to the improvements in technology, health information services are also found on the internet, thus helping the society be prevented from minor health cases. Therefore, raising the level of telecommunication access will also reduce the rate of unattended health case by raising the communities’ intelligence. The quality of health service offered by the hospitals should be raised, which increases the level of trust between the citizens and the doctors/hospitals. Qualified personnel should be employed in every single health center to cater almost all medical problems in the society (Liaw et al., 2011).

Finally, the government should improve the construction of social facilities closer to the remote areas to reduce the distance covered by individual seeking for medical help. Transportation services should also be an improvement in the country by constructing roads, which raises the chances of acquiring private or public vehicles whenever needed. If these barriers are effectively managed, the social status of the aboriginal will be improved by reducing their mortality rates and increasing the efficiency of acquiring medical assistance (Steffens, Jamieson, and Kapellas, 2016).

The culturally and linguistically diverse communities are perceived to be a combination of different ethnic groups who originates from different parts of the globe. These groups have diverse socio-cultural beliefs, and they varied by their religions. There are several barriers to effective health care that are experienced by the CALD communities in living in Australia. Some of these barriers are knowledge and information about available medical services, personal experiences with healthcare professionals, differences in socio-cultural and religious beliefs and influences from significant others based on health perception (Adebayo, Durey, and Slack-Smith, 2016). 

Some individuals in the Australian state who are associated with the CALD communities might not be informed about the available medical health services in the country. Therefore, these particular people might suffer from some health problems that can be treated in the available health centers. For instance, a patient from foreign countries might be suffering from diabetes, a disease that can be treated in specific health centers but because of insufficient information, the condition may worsen. There might be community-based support groups that educate/inform diabetes patients on how to manage their conditions (Alzubaidi et al., 2015). Without information about the existence of such groups, the patients might not enjoy such health services. If people do not acquire the required information, they will not be involved in ongoing advice from the medical practitioners about preventions and interventions to serious societal health problems (Cross et al., 2014).

Telecommunications

Individuals from different areas in the globe will tend to have personal perceptions about hospitals and health services. Therefore, there might be problems with the way the individuals from the CALD communities interact with the doctors (MHCS, 2010). There might be cases of language barriers which leads to either misunderstanding or insufficient communication. With the differences in the communication, the patient will not receive the required medical assistance. Individuals who will be communicating in a different language will have higher chances of failed trust for the doctors compared to patients speaking in English (Australian Government | Health Department, 2011). This is because if the doctor understands the core health problem, medical assistance will be offered quickly as compared to a person whose medical issue is not yet known. The considerations of the social and emotional factors by the doctor is very important for effective medical care. It can be disappointing if a patient is blamed for a disease suffered by the medical practitioners. 

Communities have different religious and socio-cultural belief, whereby some are attached to the way they receive medical/health services. Some individuals might be born into a culture that fears a diagnosis of certain diseases to avoid being informed that they are victims. There are some other religious beliefs, especially in Islamic culture who believe that the human life is transient, and much should not be consulted in search for life extension (Cross et al., 2014). Therefore, people from this religion might not acquire continued sufficient medical assistance because it is not according to their beliefs. Also, cultures believe that some specific health problems are as a result of a curse, and medical help should not be sought; rather they should wait and face their wrath. All these beliefs affect the delivery and access to health care services.

Every individual has colleagues whom they respect and consult in every individual case. These people can affect the efficiency of the people from CALD communities accessing health care effectively. This is because they might offer wrong health advice to their friends who are in need of urgent medical assistance. For instance, a fellow might speak out about the symptoms being identified but due to assumptions, advice from friends might be inadequate for this particular case. In cases when an individual is advised to wait for recovery without seeing the doctor might lead to severe medical cases. 

Firstly, the CALD communities in the Australian continent should be informed about the available hospitals and health services in their localities. This will help reduces cases of severe effects caused due to lack of information. This information can be provided through internet medical services or manuals to all the people entering the country. Solutions should be provided to the experienced problems in the health care provision systems. For instance, language barrier problem can be solved by employing language translation services. Research should be conducted to evaluate the efficiency of health services provided to help curb the extremely negative effects (Dowling, 2014). Health advice should be provided to individuals who are reported to be suffering by encouraging them to seek medical assistance where possible. This will help people having issues of culture and religion opt seeking medical help whenever they feel unwell. Finally, there should be community-based support groups that teach individuals about the importance of consulting the doctor whenever there is a need. 

Service Providers’ Trust

References

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Alzubaidi, H., Mc Namara, K., Browning, C. and Marriott, J. (2015). Barriers and enablers to health care access and use among Arabic-speaking and Caucasian English-speaking patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: a comparative qualitative study. BMJ Open, 5(11), pp.e008687-e008687.

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