Suchergebnisse

Remote health professionals encounter many challenges associated with delivering care in poorly serviced remote locations and working across cultures. Despite an identified need for the assessment practices of health and social care professionals to accommodate cultural differences, and for staff training in the area, deficits in preparing the remote workforce for assessment remain. This paper combines the results of two qualitative studies to consider current and improved approaches to preparing and supporting staff for conducting assessments in remote and Indigenous settings. Study A focused on aged care assessment practices within the remote Aboriginal context of Central Australia, and Study B focused on the practice for assessing cognition among Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory. Our secondary analysis of these combined data sets provides valuable information to improve planning of approaches to preparing staff for assessments in these contexts. We report themes relating to three categories: the assessment workforce, current approaches to preparing assessment staff, and cross‐cultural knowledge/skill. We discuss which areas require more detailed attention to prepare staff for this work – such as critical reflection and cultural safety – as well as how this may best be achieved – such as through the inclusion of cultural supervisors in practitioners' supervision models, and in follow‐up components to workshop models.

Cultural safety is a term that originated in the nursing profession in New Zealand. Common definitions focus on participants (whether clients or workers) feeling safe; feeling they can express their cultural identity; feel respected and listened to. The present study describes the concept of cultural safety and how it is applied in statutory child protection in Alice Springs. The context of child protection is described, including the workplace context, where Aboriginal Community Workers comprise 30% of the child protection workforce. Applying the concept of cultural safety can be more challenging in settings other than health care, and particularly in statutory child protection. However, we are finding it valuable for creating more appropriate workplaces for Aboriginal staff in child protection, and for assisting casework approaches and decisions for all staff. The present study discusses the process of developing a shared understanding of cultural safety to assist critical reflection on our workplace and casework.

AbstractThis paper covers a Roundtable Discussion about available data on indigenous populations included in large health and aging studies in Australia during the 2010 Australian Association of Gerontology Northern Territories, "The Ageing North," Conference. The intended focus was to identify available health and well‐being data on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations including health transitions and morbidity in adults and older adults; to discuss the consultation process that would be needed to decide if the data can be analysed; and if so, how to proceed with examination of those data. It is recognised that indigenous participation is essential in commencing dialogue with the data custodians.