Cultural Safety In Australia

Cultural Safety

Can effective nursing practice of an individual or family who hails from a different culture like the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders be determined by such individual or family?

As one who takes care of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals specifically if such a person is not an indigenous person, it is important that he/she has the ability of maintaining and creating cultural safety for the child placed in his/her care.(Williams, 2008).

The first step in having a better comprehension of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters in order that one could be more culturally aware is for such an individual to be culturally observant. On the contrary, cultural safety occurs when one, as a career, makes provision

Aboriginal’s and Torres Strait Islanders’ cultural practice is of great importance as it has some relations to the way they display their attitude when it comes to death in their families.

It takes days, weeks, and even months to conduct ceremonies and mourning depending on the beliefs of the language group, as well as the social status of the individual that is deceased. It is also possible to have burials delayed as a result of family disputes regarding the origin of the person (linked to where the burial should take place), or the inheritance with regards to their land and property.

It is important to note that it is not culturally appropriate for an individual who is not an Aboriginal to establish contact and pass information to the next of kin regarding the death of a relative as this breach of cultural protocol may result in significant anguish for families of the Aboriginal connected to the individual who passed away (Korff, 2017).

The difficulties met in any cross-cultural health service delivery setting seem to be magnified by the disparity existing between Aboriginal culture and mainstream Western culture.

There has been adaptation of the Aboriginal people’s ‘traditional’ beliefs to the changing situations in which they live (Maher,1999, pp 229–236). While over the time, there have been changes made in Aboriginal viewpoints of treatment, only little change has taken place in terms of their beliefs regarding what causes illness. This may be the result of health beliefs in continuously playing a role in bringing in meaning to events that take place in their lives, thereby assisting people in handling serious illness and death.(Maher,