‘With my heart and eyes open’: Nursing students′ reflections on placements in Australian, urban Aboriginal organisations

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that students who have immersive experiences in Indigenous settings emerge with a greater understanding of their own values and attitudes and increased appreciation for Indigenous Peoples and culture. Up to 80% of Indigenous people in Australia live in urban settings, yet research on nursing students' placements in urban Indigenous organisations is scarce. This manuscript presents qualitative findings from the analysis of eight third year nursing student's reflective essays, written iteratively across a three-week placement in urban Aboriginal organisations. Reflective journaling was employed as a pedagogical method.All the students reported experiencing profound personal and professional growth. Thematic analysis resulted in three themes 'Working with experience and uncertainty', 'Developing acceptance and understanding' and Becoming allies and advocates'.From the findings, it is evident that despite the logistical issues of a small Indigenous population and a vast nursing cohort, it is important to ensure that all nursing students have opportunities to engage authentically with Indigenous people, in places and spaces of Indigenous authority, and opportunities to reflect on their learnings in the context of their previous understandings.

Racism in healthcare: a scoping review

“…These articles mainly explore how healthcare staff perceive interactions with Roma people in Slovakia [ 173 ], Spain [ 174 ], Romania [ 175 ] and in multi-European contexts [ 176 ]. Moreover, these studies look at American Indians in the USA [ 106 ], African American women in the USA [ 177 ], Micronesian women in Hawai ‘i in the USA [ 178 ], Indigenous people in Australia [ 179 ], Asians in the UK [ 180 , 181 ] as well as racialized minorities in general in Belgium [ 182 ], in Ireland [ 183 ] and in France [ 14 ].…”

Reflexive Practice as an Approach to Improve Healthcare Delivery for Indigenous Peoples: A Systematic Critical Synthesis and Exploration of the Cultural Safety Education Literature

“…A total of 46 documents were analysed, describing 43 different educational interventions. The majority ( n = 35) of documents described university-based educational interventions [ 16 , 18 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 38 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 66 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 73 , 80 , 81 , 83 , 84 ], with one set of documents describing a short vocational training course [ 85 , 86 , 87 ], and the remainder ( n = 8) describing continuing professional education (CPE) courses for practicing health professionals [ 17 , 19 , 20 , 36 , 69 , 73 , 88 , 89 ]. Just over half of the documents analysed ( n = 28) were from Australia [ 17 , 18 , 20 , 22 …”

“…The importance of cultural safety as an approach to healthcare provision is now well established, with a substantial body of literature exploring the application of cultural safety across a range of health professions, including nursing and midwifery [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ], medicine [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ], psychology [ 29 ], physiotherapy [ 30 ], occupational therapy [ 31 , 32 ], and nutrition [ 33 ]. As such it is increasingly being included in health sciences curricula at the tertiary level in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, and the United States [ 34 ] and developed as short continuing professional education courses (for example, [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]).…”

“…While there is a growing body of literature on cultural safety education, at present, there is little guidance on the best approach to teach or assess reflexivity in the context of cultural safety. Currently, most cultural safety education literature falls into three broad categories: qualitative explorations of student learning experiences [ 18 , 22 , 30 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ], evaluations of student learning outcomes [ 17 , 19 , 23 , 26 , 29 , 32 , 33 , 50 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ], and descriptions of curricula development and delivery [ 16 , 20 , 21 , 25 , 28 , 31 , 38 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ]. In evaluations of curricula and learning outcomes, student reflective journals are a common source of data.…”

Beyond 2020: Addressing racism through transformative Indigenous health and cultural safety education

“…For example, by creating specific Indigenous nursing leadership positions in every nursing and midwifery school, universities could contribute significantly to advancing the Indigenous nursing and midwifery portfolios, and ultimately improving higher education outcomes for Indigenous nursing and midwifery students (Stuart, 2017). Seeding the health system with graduates who are culturally safe for Indigenous Peoples will lead to better health outcomes overall (Power et al, 2020). To build stronger, coherent research addressing racism in the healthcare system nationally, Indigenous nursing and midwifery academic staff also need to be supported to network with other Indigenous nursing and midwifery educational researchers (Stuart, 2017).…”