Cultural safety involves empowerment of the patient and the healthcare practitioner. The main path of promoting culturally safe environment in the healthcare includes participation, protection and partnership (Pauly et al., 2015). According to Pauly et al. (2015), promotion of the culturally safe environment is mainly highlighted by the recognition of indices of power inherent under any interaction and significance of inequality and disparity within any relationship. Under the culturally safe environment, a healthcare professional is aware that imposition of his or her cultural beliefs may disadvantage the healthcare service users and thus act in accordance with the spiritual belief and cultural thoughts of the healthcare recipients. The following paper is aims to analyze the importance of effective communication and health literacy in promoting culturally safe environment in healthcare. The paper also attempts to discuss the importance of nursing professionals as selected as a target group for educating about effective communication and health literacy. At the end paper provides detailed rationale of culturally safe environment and its relation in reducing health inequality.
Effective communication is an important aspect of human interaction. It can be defined as a two-way process of sending and receiving messages. For the perspective of the cross-cultural experiences, it can be said that the spiritual and ethic belief among the cultures differ significantly. This difference in the spiritual and the ethnic background change the requirement of effective communication. Under effective communication in cross-cultural environment signifies use of both verbal and non-verbal communication skills like the touch, eye contact, silence and gestures (Renzaho et al., 2013). Effective cross-cultural communication skills are important in creating provision for culturally sensitive health care environment under hospital and community settings. The two-way communication between the indigenous and non-indigenous people, the clinical and the patients can be regarded as an important provision in healthcare as it helps in understanding the culture and the history of the patient (Renzaho et al., 2013). According to Thackrah and Thompson (2013), effective communication under a culturally safe healthcare environment helps to increase the likelihood of generating beneficial or positive relationship with the patient and the nurses. Effective communication also helps to increase the sense of confidence or self-empowerment of the Aboriginal patients and thereby increasing their capacity to understand the disease related information, the process of diagnosis and the path of management. This helps to increase patient’s participation in the care plan and thereby helping to improve the overall health-related outcomes. This in turn helps to generate culturally competent environment where the decision of the Aboriginal people is valued. Understanding about the therapy, decreases the likelihood of misunderstanding while reduction in the rate of non-compliance. All these further help to improve health related outcomes while promoting culturally safe environment. Effective communication also helps to improve respect and reputation among patient and the healthcare professionals (Queensland Health 2012).
Health literacy is recognised as a significant influence on the quality and safety of healthcare and as important determinants of health. It is defined as the collection of skills and knowledge that are required to understand and to use information associated with the health-related issues like substance abuse, disease prevention, treatment and safety. Proper health literacy of the healthcare professionals helps to increase the domain of fundamental literacy, science literacy, civic literacy and cultural literacy (Lowell, et al., 2014). Under these, civic literacy and cultural literacy comes under important consideration while promoting culturally safe environment. Under civic literacy, a healthcare professional become aware about the prevailing health issues of the public and thereby increasing their knowledge in getting involved in the overall decision making process about the health of the patient. On the other hand, cultural literacy increases the ability of recognise the collective spiritual and cultural believes of the patient and their family members. Increase in the knowledge about the current healthcare concerns and cultural or spiritual belief of the indigenous group of population helps the nursing and the healthcare professionals to frame person-centred care plan. This person centred care plan not only upholds the physical health requirement but also gives equal important of the mental health needs of the individuals depending on their cultural background. All these help promote a culturally competent healthcare environment where the values and believes of the indigenous population is addressed with due respect (Lambert et al., 2014).
The main target group of this presentation are the nursing professional. It is the nursing professionals who spend the majority of the time with the patients while their stay in the hospital or under the community care settings. They are the first point of contact for patients during medical emergency. Such enlightening them about the important of the effective communication and health literacy in establishing culturally safe environment in healthcare will help to improve the overall health outcome of the indigenous or the Aboriginal population residing in Australia (Kitson et al., 2013). According to Godding (2014), the heath of the population residing in Australia has markedly improved during the latter half of the twentieth century. However, these health improvements in Australia is still characterised by significant level of health inequality. These health inequalities’ increase the morbidity and the mortality rate among the Aboriginals. Increase in the overall competence of health literacy and the effective communication among the nursing professionals will help to generate a culturally competent environment for the Aboriginals. Under this culturally competent environment the values, believes and the voices of the indigenous population in Australia or the people who are from culturally and linguistically diverse communities (CALD) will be heard and respected. This will increase their overall access to care and participation in the care plan and thereby helping to decrease the overall health inequalities in Australia (Betancourt, Corbett & Bondaryk, 2014).
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that culturally safe environment is an important aspect of health care for the indigenous population. Thus it is the duty of the nursing professionals to refine their skills of effective communication and indulge in health literacy in order to promote a culturally safe environment for the Aboriginals. Gaining health literacy about the cultural and the spiritual beliefs of the Aboriginals helps the nursing professionals to work on their effective communication skills while providing care to the indigenous group of population. The effective communication skills helps to extract proper health related information from the patient and at the same time helps to uphold their cultural belief and values. This culturally competent approach helps to increase the provision of care for the Aboriginals and thereby helping to reduce health inequalities.
References
Betancourt, J. R., Corbett, J., & Bondaryk, M. R. (2014). Addressing disparities and achieving equity: cultural competence, ethics, and health-care transformation. Chest, 145(1), 143-148. https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.13-0634
Godding, R. (2014). The persistent challenge of inequality in Australia’s health. The Medical journal of Australia, 201(8), 432. doi: 10.5694/mja14.c1020
Kitson, A., Marshall, A., Bassett, K., & Zeitz, K. (2013). What are the core elements of patient?centred care? A narrative review and synthesis of the literature from health policy, medicine and nursing. Journal of advanced nursing, 69(1), 4-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2012.06064.x
Lambert, M., Luke, J., Downey, B., Crengle, S., Kelaher, M., Reid, S., & Smylie, J. (2014). Health literacy: health professionals’ understandings and their perceptions of barriers that Indigenous patients encounter. BMC health services research, 14(1), 614. doi: 10.1186/s12913-014-0614-1
Lowell, A., Schmitt, D., Ah Chin, W., & Connors, C. (2014). Provider Health Literacy, cultural and communication competence: towards an integrated approach in the Northern Territory.Access date: 15th September 2018. Retrieved from: https://digitallibrary.health.nt.gov.au/prodjspui/bitstream/10137/885/1/Health%20literacy%20communication%20and%20cultural%20competence%20towards%20an%20integrated%20approach%20in%20Indigenous%20health%20care.pdf
Pauly, B. B., McCall, J., Browne, A. J., Parker, J., & Mollison, A. (2015). Toward cultural safety. Advances in Nursing Science, 38(2), 121-135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1097/ANS.0000000000000070
Queensland Health. (2012). Communicating effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Version: 1. Access date: 15th September 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.cultura.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-02/Communicating%20effectively%20with%20Aboriginal%20and%20Torres%20Strait%20Islander%20people_1.pdf
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. https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzt006
Thackrah, R., & Thompson, S. (2013). Refining the concept of cultural competence: building on decades of progress. Medical Journal of Australia, 199(1), 35-38. doi: 10.5694/mja13.10499
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