HLSD120 - Indigenous Health and Culture

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Nil

Incompatible

HLSC120 Indigenous Health and Culture , HLSZ120 INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND CULTURE

Unit rationale, description and aim

Being a health professional, it is a requirement that students are able to perform person-centred care in a culturally competent manner. This requirement exists because all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity regardless of their beliefs, values or attitudes. Students are required to undertake this unit as it provides the foundation for culturally competent practice through the lens of Indigenous Australian culture to ensure graduates enter the workforce as culturally competent practitioners.

The social-historical-political context, cultural knowledges, and related health issues of Indigenous peoples across the world and in Australia will be the focus of this unit. The concept of globalisation will be introduced and explored with reference to the health of Indigenous peoples. Students will then examine the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health, contemporary issues in healthcare provision, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ ways of knowing, being and doing. The impact of current strategies to close the gap in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care will be examined, along with ways that the health care system can respond to the health needs of this group. The notion of culturally competent care will be introduced, and students will start to develop knowledge and skills needed to provide culturally competent care to people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Aligned with cultural competence are principles of community engagement – in this unit, students will be introduced to the principles that would enable safe and effective community engagement and explore how these principles can be applied within their practice.

The aim of this unit is to provide health students with a solid foundation on which to build cultural competency across their undergraduate program – knowledge and skills that they will need to apply to their future health care practice.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

Content

Topics will include: 

• The health consequences of globalisation with particular reference to
• Social determinants of health
• Inequalities in health status
• Global Indigenous health
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
• Indigenous Australian ways of knowing, being and doing
• Traditional ways of healing
• History and health consequences of colonisation
• Acute and chronic conditions, co-morbidity and disability amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Racism and the impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Effect of government policy on health and social wellbeing
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care provision
• Policy and community initiatives in health care, including the Closing the Gap strategy
• Primary healthcare approach
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care workers
• Self-determination and Aboriginal controlled healthcare organisations
• Reconciliation
• Cultural competence in health care
• Definitions and debates around cultural competence
• Knowledge and skills in the provision of culturally competent care
• Using a strengths-based approach 
• Providing culturally appropriately care
• Community engagement
• Interprofessional and multisectorial healthcare
• Introduction to community engagement in health
• Principles of working collaboratively with communities, capacity building, reciprocity, and transformative learning

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit will be delivered using a combination of lectures, workshops, online activities and self-directed study. Consistent with adult learning principles, the teaching and learning approaches used within these modes of delivery will provide students with foundational knowledge and skills relevant to professional practice for healthcare professionals. These strategies will also support students in meeting the aim, learning outcomes and graduate attributes of the unit and the broader course learning outcomes. Learning and teaching strategies will reflect respect for the individual as an independent learner. Students will be expected to take responsibility for their learning and to participate actively with peers. The social-historical-political context, cultural knowledges, and related health issues of Indigenous peoples across the world and related concepts will be delivered as lectures and online content. Explanation, exploration and application of these concepts to health care practice will be undertaken in the workshop classes and embedded in the assessment activities. 

Further to this, to ensure students are ready to transition from the Diploma and articulate into the second year of undergraduate study, transition pedagogies will be incorporated into the unit as the key point of differentiation from the standard unit. This focuses on an active and engaging approach to learning and teaching practices, and a scaffolded approach to the delivery of curriculum to enhance student learning in a supportive environment. This will ensure that students develop foundation level discipline-based knowledge, skills and attributes, and simultaneously the academic competencies required of students to succeed in this unit.

Assessment strategy and rationale

A range of assessment items consistent with University assessment requirements and policy will be used to ensure students achieve the Unit Learning Outcomes and attain the Graduate Attributes. These assessments are required to build student knowledge and skills which, by the conclusion of this program, will enable the student to graduate as a safe and effective health care professional.

The oral assessment ensures sound communication skills which are required for all interactions as a health care professional; it assesses an understanding of issues specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The written assignment and cultural project examine cultural competence and associated knowledge which will direct future practice as a health care professional. These assessments are required to build student knowledge which, by the conclusion of this program, will allow the student to graduate as a health care professional who can behave with cultural competence. This requirement exists because all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity regardless of their beliefs, values or attitudes.

Strategies aligned with transition pedagogies will be utilised to facilitate successful completion of the unit assessment tasks. For each assessment, there will be the incorporation of developmentally staged tasks with a focus on a progressive approach to learning. This will be achieved through activities, including regular feedback, particularly early in the unit of study to support their learning; strategies to develop and understand discipline-specific concepts and terminology; in-class practice tasks with integrated feedback; and greater peer-to-peer collaboration. 

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Best, O., & Fredericks, B. (2018). Yatdjuligin: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nursing and midwifery care (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108123754

Biles, B., & Biles, J. (Eds.). (2020). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' health and wellbeing. Oxford University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=5611991

Eckermann, A., Dowd, T., Chong, E., Nixon, L., Gray, R., & Johnson, S. (2010). Binan Goonj: Bridging cultures in Aboriginal health (3rd ed.). Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier Health Sciences. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=1721994

Germov, J. (Ed.) (2019). Second opinion: an introduction to health sociology (6th Ed). Oxford University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=5611991

Guzys, D., Brown, R., Halcomb, E. & Whitehead, D. (2019). An introduction to community and primary health care. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316711873

Hampton, R., & Toombs, M. (Eds.). (2013). Indigenous Australians and health: The wombat in the room. Oxford University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=1986010

Labonte, R. & Ruckert, A. (2019). Health inequities in a globalizing era: past challenges, future prospects. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198835356.001.0001

Smith, J. (2020). Australia’s rural, remote and Indigenous health. (3rd ed.). Elsevier. https://www.clinicalkey.com.au/nursing/#!/content/book/3-s2.0-B9780729542418000159

Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. (2019). Health care and Indigenous Australians: Cultural safety in practice (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=6235065