Nursing Assignment on Cultural Healthcare Need OfAboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders

Question

Task: A critical review provides a summarization and evaluation of ideas and information. The purpose of this nursing assignment is to critically review the unique cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in order to provide culturally safe care.

In your assignment, you must:
1. Choose three examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait cultural health care needs. These examples will likely differ from Australian healthcare models, systems, guidelines or policies.
2. Examples can include men’s and women’s business, traditional healing and medicine, birthing on Country, dying on Country, cultural beliefs about aging, social and emotional well-being not a biomedical mental illness, health beliefs that include the whole of community.
3. Critically review each example, considering:
• How your examples differ for the Australian healthcare model/system/guideline/policy.
• Evaluate what could be done by registered nurses to provide culturally safe health care.

Answer

Introduction
The paper on nursing assignmentwill share its concern for the cultural health care need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to identify the gaps in the healthcare sector for the referred community. For the discussion, it will identify three cultural health care needs of the community which would further be supported by clear identification of the need, the difference with Australian Healthcare system, procedure, and responsibility of the registered nurse to meet the need.

Cultural Health care need1 - language
Health Care need is most important for every person. However, every Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander have different types of Healthcare need which directly gets connected with their culture and can be confirmed as cultural health care need (Belton et al. 2018). For any health care need, accessibility and availability are most important.Taking care of the fact the most important cultural health care need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is effective communication or understanding of language. As per the research, it has been seen that Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders' life expectancy is 11.5 years lower than the non-indigenous population. Cultural differences and the social-economic disparity have played a significant role in this difference as most of the time the health care services are not much access to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders. The cultural barrier of language is the most important factor in this regard which initiates the cultural health care need of effective communication for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to have effective communication removing issues of communication of several cultural backgrounds and unsatisfactory outcome of the healthcare service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Dixit, &Sambasivan, 2018). For any issue, health care service provider needs to have a proper understanding of the issue for which communication is very important and thus the cultural health care need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders starts with language proficiency.

The Australian Healthcare system can be divided into two major considerations - performance and patient outcome improvement, and resource allocation. In the framework for indigenous people, thehealth care need is effective allocation of the resources as per requirement and improvement of performance to offer better satisfaction to the patient (Haynes et al. 2019). In the health can need of the Australian health care system it can be said that the need is not completely different from the Aboriginal's cultural health care needs, rather it can be said that the cultural healthcare need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander's people of effective communication is a part of Australian Healthcare need of better patient outcome with improvement. Without understanding the issues of a patient, the healthcare service provider, medical practitioner, or registered nurse cannot really address the issue and effective communication is an important consideration for improved patient outcomes.However effective communication is not only one condition for better performance or improved patient outcome. Hence the Australian Healthcare needs are far wider and better than the cultural health care need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Registered nurses are the person who connects the medical practitioner with the patient and shares the closest contact with the patient to offer them improvement in their need. Hence to satisfy the cultural healthcare need for effective communication and removal of the language barrier, the registered nurses can play a significant role (Jennings, Bond, & Hill, 2018). The best way to satisfy the need is to have face-to-face interpretation as it can be helpful for effective communication in two ways where apart from language, the registered nurse can understand the facial expression, body language to identify the issue. On the other hand, if it becomes required then the registered nurse even can take the help of an interpreter to make the communication effective by the help of the interpreter where the patient from aboriginal or Torres Strait islander even can be more comfortable with the entire setup. If regular accessibility would be difficult then the registered nurse even can take the help of technology where video conferencing with the help of the interpreter or technology-based interpretation even can be helpful (Amery, 2017). However,the best way out to satisfy the cultural health care need of effective communication for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders, registered nurses need to have acknowledgment towards cultural diversity to offer effective treatment.

Cultural Health care needto addresstraditional healing, dying on country
Chronic diseases are very common for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The further child fatality rate is even higher among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which directs another cultural health care need for them confirming science prevalence among them (Jongen, McCalman, Campbell, & Fagan, 2019). Apart from the language barrier, it is even seen that indigenous people cannot have the best service or outcome from the mainstream health care facilities due to their different beliefs, faith, understanding, interpretation regarding identity, health, value and traditional healing. The factor shares a close connection with delayed access to free health check-ups, follow-up, hospital appointments, and cancer screening.In a survey, it is even seen that the Aboriginal people are more interested to maintain their daily routine following customs without taking care of individual health. In the consideration, cultural differences play a key role in the unsatisfactory outcome of health care service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders. In differing cultural beliefs, superstitions, and customs, ineffective communication even gets followed by dramatic failure of healthcare outcomes due to excessive belief on traditional healing rather than medical science.

The Australian government has improved the health care system for Australia and the policies, model, framework of the Australian Healthcare system are quite effective as per the parameters.However, it is different from the culturalhealth care need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as it can provide very little benefit to them due to ineffective communication (Li, 2017). The Australian Healthcare system is mostly concerned about a satisfactory outcome, lower fatality rate, better child health, etc. Contradictorily the cultural health care needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the accessibility of the Healthcare system as per need, understanding the importance of urgency. Hence the health care need for Australiansis all about betterment, improvement, satisfaction whereas cultural health can need for Aboriginals is to deal with their customs respectfully to remove the superstition to confirm effective access to the healthcare confirming situational and urgency. The Australian Healthcare need is only associated with healthcare, whereasthe cultural healthcare need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders, people are more connected with customs and culture to confirm easy access to healthcare. Improvement is the main consideration of Australian health care where accessibility is the main concern for cultural healthcare needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Registered nurses have the power to offer a better future for the community Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders, thereby, it is important for them to be well aware of the Socio-Political climate, history, and culture of the community, it would help them to have a better understanding of the cultural barriers of the community and effective way to remove those barriers (Lin et al. 2018). Registered nurses share a high priority for learning as learning would be much helpful to be well acknowledged and well empathized with the community culture and customs whicheventually help the registered nurses to better convince the community to follow the regular check-ups and other health care necessities without disrespecting cultural beliefs or customs of the community. Registered nurses can best make collaborate between health care needs and customs and beliefs by making the community aware of the scientific base of their healthcare-related issues for which showing respect and empathy towards them and their culture is very important. With effective learning, the language barrier even would be lowered and finally, there would be an effective relationship between the registered nurses and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders to offer them culturally safe health care services satisfying their needs.

Cultural Health care need - social and emotional wellbeing
Marginalization is a prevalent factor for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in every respect like healthcare, education, employment, etc. Due to marginalization, they often feel inferior and do not really want to fight for their rights affecting social and emotional wellbeing. In order to attain safe healthcare services, it is very important to meet the cultural health care needs of social and emotional wellbeingthrough equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. In the aspect of social and emotional wellbeing, the Aboriginal or Torres Strait islanders face the issue from both the concerns of marginalization, humiliation, embarrassment and improper communication, including ineffective transportation (Mithen et al. 2021). The Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders mostly live in a distant place without any advantage of civilization like education, employment, or health care. From the beginning of their lives, they started to live deprived lives and thus they become less efficient which eventually makes them more affected in social and emotional wellbeing to access any advantage of the society which clearly notifies inequality of the society. Hence for the specific culture,social and emotional wellbeingthrough equality becomes an important cultural health care need as due to inequality they suffer from accessibility and availability issues and sometimes even affordability issues, which are most important for any service

Australian people have adequate support to accessibility and availability for any type of health care service and they even do not need to deal with any sort of inequality, marginalization, humiliation, or embarrassment. Thereby, the health care needs for Australians share its concern for up-gradation, betterment, development, lower fatality, reducing child obesity, etc (Playford, Bailey, Fisher, Stasinska, Marshall, Gawlinski, &Young, 2019). On the other hand, the cultural health care need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is to have proper access to health care services, specifically primary health care without having any sort of barrier. The cultural health care needs are different from the Australian Healthcare system, policy, or framework as the latter is looking for excellence whereas the cultural health care need of Aboriginals is fighting for the necessity to confirm adequate equal access to health care without having the issue of availability or affordability. Cultural identity signifies the belongingness of a people to a group to confirm social and emotional wellbeing. Biological and physical differences of Aboriginal prevents them to actively participate in the treatment for treatment procedure where Australian do not really have any such cultural issues in their healthcare setup. Thus, the Australian healthcare is free from such barriers and the main motto of healthcare is to offer the highest satisfaction to the patient.

In order to confirm social and emotional wellbeingthrough equality in the Healthcare setup, the most important consideration for a registered nurse is to have empathetic respectfulbehavior towards the community (Ristevski, Thompson, Kingaby, Nightingale, &Iddawela, 2020). It can often be seen that some health care professionals or registered nurses have inherent hatred or demeaning attitudes towards Aboriginal Australiansor Torres StraitIslanders which eventually increase inequality in the entire service area. As per the survey, it is even seen that low motivation, low confidence, confusion about their role, and cultural incompetency of the registered nurse create a problem to secure the health care needs of social and emotional wellbeing for the Aboriginals or Torres Strait islanders. In order to deal with all the issues effectively, it is very important for the registered nurses to have effective training over cultural diversity to be well aware of the customs and beliefs of that specific community to treat them accordingly. Registered nurses even need to be efficient enough to secure effective interpersonal relationships with their Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander clients to confirm easy accessibility and availability of the healthcare services confirming equality (Shield et al. 2018). Such initiative eventually gets followed by the requirement of being tech-savvy on the part of a registered nurse due to the geographical location of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.It is not possible to have face-to-face interaction where technological excellence like video conferencing, the telephonic conversation can be much helpful to offer the primary service to justify the cultural healthcare in need of equality for Aboriginal or Torres Strait islanders.

Conclusion
The paper has shared its concern for cultural health care needs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders considering that the healthcare setup of Australia has several gaps to offer the best service to the referred community. It has identified three Cultural Health Care needs for Aboriginals or Torres Strait Islanders where the need starts from language issues and ends withsocial and emotional wellbeing concern with consideration of superstitions beliefs or customs. For each cultural health care need of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders, clear identification of the need with supported arguments and difference between Australian Healthcare system procedure and cultural healthcare need has been depicted. For each need, the responsibility of the registered nurse even is described while the main consideration is to confirm better accessibility, availability, and affordability for the community.

References
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