Northern Territory Aboriginal health leader Kelly Clark (nee Anderson) and Canadian researcher Prof Hsien Seow share the important elements of providing culturally safe, co-designed palliative care for First Nations people including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Cultural safety puts an individual’s wishes and choices at the centre of care.
“For something to be culturally safe, that’s defined by the patient. It’s really sitting down with the patient and asking what you need to know about them, how you can honour their journey, what they want and don’t want,” says Kelly Clark, IPEPA (Indigenous Program of Experience in the Palliative Approach) Northern Territory Manager.
This sense of safety is something that is being rebuilt after many years of broken trust with non-Indigenous healthcare providers and government agencies in Australia.
“Intergenerational trauma through things like the Stolen Generations has had an impact,” Clark says.
“Also understanding that for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person a hospital is not necessarily somewhere their family got healed – it was somewhere they went and never came back. The way a hospital runs is so contrary to the Aboriginal culture.”
The program that’s helping build cultural safety in healthcare
IPEPA is a national program that operates around Australia to educate healthcare workers in how to provide culturally safe palliative care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
“We want to support mainstream healthcare staff to deliver culturally responsive palliative care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that is holistic and safe to them, and which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are leading,” Clark says.
“In our workshops we deal with things like yarning, creating rapport, showing the patient that you are interested in them as a person – and making that connection first, before any of the medical talk comes in.”
She adds that it’s important for healthcare workers to take that time to maintain respect for a patient’s culture at all times.
“Wearing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art can be very powerful, because if they’ve received racial discrimination then seeing someone with Aboriginal art on display or wearing it is open to your culture,” Clark says.
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