Achieving cultural safety for Australia

ConclusionsThe review identified multiple areas to improve the codes for cultural safety content for registered health professions, providing a roadmap for action to strengthen individual and systems practice while setting a clear regulatory standard to ensure culturally safe practice becomes the new norm. It recommends the systematic updating of all professional health practitioner Board Codes of Conduct and professional Codes of Ethics based on the objectives outlined in Ahpra's Cultural Safety Strategy.What is known about the topic?Systemic racism and culturally unsafe work environments contribute to poor health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They also contribute to the under-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the health workforce, denying the system, and the people who use and work in it, much needed Indigenous knowledge. Creating a culturally safe healthcare system requires all health practitioners to reflect on their own cultural background, to gain appreciation of the positive and negative impacts of individually held cultural assumptions on the delivery of healthcare services. Competence in cultural safety as a required standard of practice is therefore essential if broad, sustainable and systemic cultural change across the health professions and ultimately across Australia's healthcare system is to be achieved. Given that Codes of Conduct and Codes of Ethics are integral in setting the practical and moral s...

Source: Australian Health Review - April 12, 2021 Category: Hospital Management Authors: Eleanor Milligan Roianne West Vicki Saunders Andrea Bialocerkowski Debra Creedy Fiona Rowe Minniss Kerry Hall Stacey Vervoort Source Type: research