“My work? Well, I live it and breathe it”: The seamless connect between the professional and personal/community self in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health sector

Abstract

Background Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals often juggle the challenges of working and living in the same community in ways that are positive for both themselves and their clients. This study specifically examines the strategies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals have developed to enable them to feel empowered by the sense of being always visible or perceived as being always available. Findings provide examples of how participants (Team Members) established a seamless working self, including how they often held different perspectives to many work colleagues, how Team Members were always visible to community and how Team Members were comfortable to be seen as working when not at work. Methods This qualitative study engages an Indigenous research methodology and uses an Indigenous method, PhotoYarning, to explore lived experiences of a group (n = 15) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers as they worked in the Australian health sector. Results The analysis presented here comes from data generated through PhotoYarning sessions. Team Members in this study all work in health care settings in the communities in which they also live, they manage an extremely complex network of interactions and relationships in their daily working lives. They occupy an ambivalent, and sometimes ambiguous, position as representing both their health profession and their community. This article explores examples of what working with seamlessness involved, with findings citing four main themes: (1) Being fellow members of their cultural community, (2) the feeling of always being visible to community as a health worker, (3) the feeling of always being available as a health worker to community even when not at work and (4) the need to set an example. Conclusions While creating the seamlessness of working and living in the same community was not easy, Team Members considered it an important feature of the work they did and vital if they were to be able to provide quality health service to their community. However, they reported that the seamless working self was at odds with the way many of their non-Indigenous Australian colleagues worked and it was not well understood.

Unique knowledge, unique skills, unique role: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers in Queensland, Australia

“…Underpinning the cross-cutting functions of the A&TSIHW role, participants emphasised its unique orientation, defined by client centredness and realised through Indigenous strengths-based ways of knowing, being and doing. These findings have resonance with those reported by Dickson 18 whose rich descriptions of the experiences of 15 A&TSIHWs highlight the seamlessness of working and living in the same community as an important feature of their work and vital to providing quality health services to their community. Both Dickson and the current study highlight how at the core of differences between A&TSIHW and other health professional roles, lies an ability to, and responsibility for, holding different knowledges and considering the contexts and manner in which each should be invoked to provide high-quality physical, mental and spiritual care for clients.…”

“…Notwithstanding the unique nature of the A&TSIHW role within Australia's state-based health workforces, lack of understanding of the distinctive skills, scope and value associated with its function remains pervasive. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] This manifests in different ways including poor recognition of the role's purpose and scope 7 14 ; misunderstanding of role boundaries 19 20 ; lack of respect for reporting lines; and in demands that A&TSIHWs assist other professionals with often menial tasks. 10 These factors coalesce in the lack of any clear models of care that operationalise the 'ideal' of supporting the profession as a member of a multidisciplinary team.…”

A strengths-based approach to exploring diabetes management in an Indigenous minority population: A mixed methods study

“…Critical interactionist analytical approaches also use narratives to facilitate shifting the discourse away from the dominant academic/social voice and centering the perspectives of marginalized groups, so that 'their lived experience becomes the vehicle through which new knowledge is not only created but also made relevant to the communities of concern' [37:499]. Narrative-and storytelling-methods are increasingly being used in public health research [40][41][42][43][44] because they enable healthcare providers and policy makers to virtually experience, and thus better understand and address, the multi-level effects of social determinants on their patients' lives, health, and healthcare experiences [13,14,[42][43][44][45]. The results of the quantitative multivariable analyses also supported the connections described by focus group participants between socioeconomic, psychological, health, and healthcare system factors and the healthcare access, economic barrier, health behavior and mental health outcomes we examined.…”

The role of Indigenous Health Workers in ear health screening programs for Indigenous children: a scoping review

“…While often challenging, IHWs explain navigating their visibility and availability as a health worker in their community as necessary to providing quality care; a responsibility described by IHWs as poorly understood by their non-Indigenous colleagues. 60 37 Ongoing programming should publicly report information about Indigenous involvement in service provision to enable a more comprehensive understanding of current efforts in Indigenous ear health; reporting and measuring progress on targets is part of the national Closing the Gap agreement in Australia. 62 Despite the established importance of IHWs as core members of the healthcare team, 10 papers included in this review provided limited opportunities for IHWs to express their opinions regarding ear health services.…”