In July, 2022, Chastina Heck led our LIPPE at Noon webinar. In conversation with Paul Gibson, Indigenous Allied Health Australia (IAHA) and Anna Tiatia Fa’atoese Latu, University of Otago, this session gave insight into experiences regarding cultural safety and responsiveness across health professions, and what a Strengths Based Approach looks like.
“There is beauty and strength in culture. Knowing, being and doing. This new experience is furthering my journey in cultural safety and understanding. Even as an Aboriginal woman myself, I am still on a journey,” Chastina said.
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IAHA represents First Nations people working in Allied Health disciplines. Mr Paul Gibson, IAHA, shared survey findings on their experiences regarding cultural safety, racism, and lateral violence within education, clinical placement, training, and employment. More than 100 IAHA members across a diverse range of sectors had responded to the open survey in 2022.
Findings:
Anna Tiatia Fa’atoese Latu has a gift of sharing great learnings through beautiful lived experiences. She reflected on institutional systems and structures after a 5 day stint at the hospital for a family member.
“I saw lots of my students that I taught in medical school years back, who are now beautiful doctors, but not one of them said Kia Ora.”
After teaching them everything about building relationships with patients, she was disappointed to experience a lack of engagement with her around her family. To which her husband responded with, ‘The institution is still the same.’
“That was a really good lesson for me in that moment. We’re so passionate about making a difference. I carry it everywhere I go. How can I shift those stats? How can I make a difference for my people? And I know that my colleagues are just as passionate.
“But until the institutions, systems, structures, and policies change, we’re still going to be hitting our heads against a brick wall,” Anna said.
“I hope we’re inspiring people here to stretch, to change, to want to learn more, and say ‘I’m going to make a difference in my lifetime’. Because the sooner we get more people onboard making small or big changes, the sooner we’re going to see those statistics shift,” she said.
A strengths-based approach focuses on assets and cultural strengths (Bulloch, H., et.al).
A challenge known to educators in the pharmacy space is changing the way that previously a very western institution and perspective of health was put forward and taught.
Much of the time it was statistics about Indigenous versus Non-Indigenous rates of disease without any other real opportunity for context or discussion, and that’s often what we talk about when we say a ‘deficit discourse narrative’.
Understanding deficit models is complex. It takes intentional research and practice to understand what we’re doing that may not be best serving First Nations peoples.
“It is not about minimising the disparity or ignoring the lived experience, reality and truth. It’s just not the only story that should be told.” – Chastina Heck
A Strengths Based Approach may look like focussing on:
Social determinants of health are also important. For example, if someone does not have access to a refrigerator because of where they live, this part of the story needs to be told for safe medication management and minimising the use of our internal assumptions and bias. Whilst some people may not think of people living in an urban setting as experiencing disadvantage, it is very different to a context within a very remote healthcare context.
– Chastina Heck
“The benefits of these sorts of networks is you can influence change across your profession. Having a group of people who are looking to take action within your own spheres of influences at individual, community, and institutional levels is a powerful thing,” said Paul Gibson.
“As Indigenous people, we know who we are. We are those people every day. We do our healthcare business and we’d love you to be able to do it with us as well,” Chastina said.
“There is beauty and strength in culture. Knowing, being and doing.”
The LIPPE at Noon webinars aim to bring together like-minded people wanting to see Indigenous voices in the delivery of pharmacy education. It’s where we build the LIPPE Network!
We would like to advise Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples that this website contains images, voices or names of a person who has died.