The Relationship Between Patients And Their Medical Professional

Within culturally diverse population in Australia, especially for Indigenous groups than non-indigenous population, low level of health literacy has been considered as negative factor that impacting on the delivery of effective care and health professionals’ performances on medical treatment. With integrated health literacy program, culturally competent and appropriate communication at individual, systemic and organisational level would enhance health outcomes for consumer’s welfare. Most importantly, improved health literacy and effective communication skills would plays an important part for delivery on good quality with equal opportunity to access healthcare service to all class. This academic essay will examine how health literacy

Firstly, a challenge that the nurse may face are the cultural differences in non-verbal communication. For example, “maintaining eye contact during conversation [conveys] respect” in American culture (Potter, 2014, p. 247). However, eye contact is “considered intrusive, threatening, or harmful” in Aboriginal culture (Potter, 2014, p. 247). Whereas patients in Western culture are expressive, Aboriginal patients often control their affect to maintain a calm demeanor (Eliopoulos, 2010, p. 30). Secondly, another challenge that the nurse may face is a language barrier. For instance, the nurse may be unable to communicate with the Aboriginal client in their native language. Alternatively, the Aboriginal client may unable to communicate in a common language with the nurse. Thirdly, a challenge that the nurse may face is the consolidation of traditional Aboriginal and Western healing practices. For instance, Aboriginal culture emphasizes the role of “energy and nature” in the healing process (Potter, 2014, p. 243). However, Western culture has only been recently introduced to this concept (Potter, 2014, p. 243). Whereas Western medicine emphasizes the use of pharmaceutical drugs, traditional Aboriginal medicine “promotes harmony within a community and in the physical and spiritual worlds through sweating and purging,

The inequalities in today’s indigenous communities are still strongly evident. Heard, Khoo & Birrell (2009), argued that while there has been an attempt in narrowing the gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, a barrier still exists in appropriate health care reaching indigenous people. The Indigenous people believe, health is more than the individual, it is

Furthermore, measures need to be taken to increase both the quality and delivery of health care to the indigenous population, including culturally appropriate health services. Each Aboriginal sub-group has their own unique needs that must be taken in account for. Thus, health care

Some of the disparities that currently exist is that the level of care is not equal between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. This is due to a lack of health services in rural areas, there are many social and socio-economic issues that are unaddressed but what this strategy aims to address is the issue that there is currently a distinct lack of cultural sensitivity and a significant amount of discrimination even in mainstream health services (Bandias, Fuller, & Holmes, 2012). I believe that if cultural competency training is implemented, it would greatly assist in removing the large barrier that currently exists between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. One important aspect that needs to be considered while attempting to ‘close the gap’ is the key concept of collaboration. Collaboration is when two or more people or groups assist one another while working towards the same objective.

Indigenous Australians’ health outcomes are considerably poorer than non-Indigenous Australians’ through substantiation of socioeconomic factors such as employment, income and education (Biddle, 2014). As the Australian Bureau of Statistics found in 1998, the constant and cumulative gap between the health outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is increasing and continues to become larger as the likelihood of Indigenous people who access health services is less feasible than non-Indigenous people due to disparities in health literacy and the ability to make informed health choices. (Australian Government,

There are a number of key health aspects that must be reinforced and improved for Indigenous Australians over the following five years. Education is commonly seen to be a major aspect in improving the health of Indigenous individuals. Education has improved over the years with participation rates increasing and a greater percentage of Indigenous people achieving a non-school qualification. In spite of these improvements, education for Indigenous people still remains below the educational level of non-Indigenous individuals (ABS & AIHW 2005). As stated in the 2005 Social Justice Report, “Poor education and literacy are linked to poor health status, and affect the capacity of people to use health information” (Australian Human Rights Commission

The outcome of a good education can result in consistent employment, good health literacy, stable housing, the ability and capacity for lifelong learning (Keleher & MacDougall 2015). Health literacy refers to a patient's knowledge and skill in making informed decisions about health care, thus low health literacy is consistent with poor health outcomes (Dickens & Mariann 2013). This shows that a low level of education will make it hard for Aboriginal patients to understand and make appropriate decisions about their health, therefore things such as medication and care plans may not be understood my the patient due to having lower health literacy levels. In Australia, a much higher percentage of Aboriginal Australians have never attended schooling compared to that of white Australians. Educational institutions do not cater culturally for Indigenous students, this can lead to a feeling of alienation by the wider community; thus leading to them leave school (Baum 2015). Having an education is vital not only to maintain a job and income but to understand what is going on while in the health care system, this determinant dramatically impacts the way and level in which Aboriginals access health care in

The health status of Indigenous Australians is significantly lower than that of non-Indigenous Australians, this could be due to a large amount of Australia’s Indigenous population living in either remote rural areas and or in a low social economic areas. In rural remote areas individuals have poorer access to health services and support services, limited access to transport, lower employement options and fewer accomidation options. In addition, to this cultural and spiritual differences may also be a barrier for indigenous Australian’s accessing services within their community.

Indigenous cultural perceptions of health and healing are distinctly different from the views of the biomedical approach of the Australian healthcare system (Ramsden, 1996). The factors that influence Indigenous Australian’s health behaviour are poorly understood by the biomedical approach to health care (Waterworth et al., 2015).

Clients with complex needs could be left to navigate the health care system on their own, due to limited resources and over stretched health workforce (Charlesworth, 2015). The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported that many chronic diseases such as stroke, diabetes and heart disease are preventable, creating a vast potential to develop a primary healthcare approach to address these issues (World Health Organisation, 2013). Studies indicate that Australian indigenous populations are over represented suffering with chronic diseases (Usher, 2011). In rural Indigenous communities, the life expectancy is ten years less than the non-indigenous populations, expressing the inequity of a health system that cannot supply the skill share needed to promote health access or provide comprehensive care to rural areas of Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016).

Hence, this will provide the foundation for accurate diagnosis and treatment and an establishment of a caring and therapeutic relationship with the patient.4 This should consist of shared perceptions and feelings regarding the nature of the problem and the outcome. Therefore, appropriate communication should integrate both patient and doctor centred approaches.4,9 However, this is especially hard to achieve within remote areas where a vast percentage of the population are elderly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Furthermore, the indigenous culture’s focus on interpersonal communication and protocols differs significantly from the Western medical model on systematic consultations.5 Henceforth, this barrier is cited to be prevalent and has resulted in poor communication as an ongoing health crisis limiting delivery of effective healthcare services to Indigenous Australians.3,6 Therefore, effective cross-cultural communication skills are crucial to providing culturally-sensitive healthcare to elderly Aboriginal and Torres Strait

In the medical world, physician-patient interactions are vital to the development of relationships between physicians and patients. For this paper, I observed a Pediatrician’s interaction with three very different patients. Even within Pediatrics, doctors see children of many different ages and have to adjust their communication methods and skills depending on specific situations. In this paper, I shall be discussing 3 of the interactions that I observed, which included a regular checkup for an 18 month baby, a yearly checkup for an 8 year old boy, and a sick 11 year old boy. From these experiences, which I shall describe more in detail throughout this paper, I learned that the majority of the concepts that we explored this year through this class play major roles in affecting physician-patient encounters in the real world and that each and every patient encounter is unique, because physicians tailor their skills and behavior based on the context and situation of the interaction.

It would be assumed that extensive research has been put into studying the effects of active listening in nursing practice, especially regarding the older population. This is considering that active listening is one of the keys of an effective therapeutic relationship. On the contrary little research has been done on the effects of active listening in older adults living in long-term care settings. The article The Experience of Being Listened To: A Qualitative Study of Older Adults in Long-Term Care Settings explores the necessity of active listening from the perspective of older adults who currently live in long-term care facilities. The research problem in this article is the importance and the experience of being listened to among the older population living in long-term care environments. Research in this area has significant importance in all areas of nursing care, especially with older adults, since listening plays a major role in the quality of care a patient receives. The research question stemming off of the research problem asks what the meaning behind the experience of being listened to is for older adults. An assumption made by the authors about the research problem is that healthcare providers directly caring for resident’s in long-term care facilities have the most opportunity to make a difference in their patient’s lives through active listening.

This population constitutes 2.5% of the entire Australian population. According to Queensland University of Technology (QUT, 2014), various factors affect the provision of healthcare services to these people. The historical factors include association of the Aboriginal communities with Europeans. During that time, the Aboriginal communities were subjected to unhealthy healthcare policies by the European governments over their resistance to the European domination. There was uneasy relationship between these two groups of people. The social factors included welfare, education and employment. Again, the European community failed to develop an integrated education and employment system that would equip the aboriginal communities with skills and knowledge needed to carry out work. The consequence of this neglect was seen in the many illiterate members who could not initiative a meaningful healthcare discourse. Education enhances health literacy and enables an individual to be responsive to his/her healthcare needs. However, the absence of education exposes an individual to