Introduction/Thesis statement
There can be very few doubts as to the fact that, while dealing with Australian aboriginal patients, healthcare professionals may never cease being observant of the particulars of these patients’ ethno-cultural affiliation. This is because there are a number of good reasons to believe that these people’s existential uniqueness does affect their attitudes towards the concept of healthcare, in general, and their attitudes towards a specific medicinal treatment, in particular. In my paper, I will aim to explore the validity of this suggestion at length.
Analytical part
When it comes to providing aboriginal patients with medicinal treatments, it is very important for healthcare workers to understand that, unlike what it used to be the case with Anglo-Australians, Australian aboriginals have historically suffered from being assigned with the underprivileged socio-economic status. Therefore, it does not come as a particular surprise that, even today Australian aboriginals continue to lag behind Australian Whites, in regards to what accounts for the quality of their living standards. For example, according to the statistical information, available on web site of Australian Bureau of Statistics (2010), “In 2008, 28% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 years and over (adults) lived in dwellings with major structural problems, with those living in remote areas most likely to be living in dwellings with structural problems (39% of adults)”. Therefore, it will only be logical for healthcare workers to expect the aboriginal patients’ health-condition to be negatively affected by a variety of purely societal factors. These factors may well account for undernourishment, drug-abuse and alcoholism. Moreover, as practice shows, unlike what it is being the case with the patients of Anglo-Australian descent – due to their significantly lessened level of the educational attainment and their unaccustomedness with the realities of an urban living, many aboriginal patients experience a wide of range of irrational anxieties, while at the hospital. For example, it does not represent much of a secret that the majority of aboriginal patients are being utterly afraid of needles. This situation is being worsened even further by the fact that, as many thematically relevant studies indicate, the population of aboriginal Australians has traditionally been associated with the disproportionally high rate of mental disorders among its members (Esler et al., 2008). In its turn, this implies that, when it comes to treating aboriginal patients, physicians and nurses need to apply an additional effort, so that these patients’ emotional comfortableness would be thoroughly ensured.
In order for them to be able to succeed in that, healthcare workers will have to acquaint themselves with the essentials of the aboriginal people’s worldview. After all, unlike what it is being the case with Anglo-Australians, aboriginals do tend to subjectualize nature, while considering themselves the nature’s integral parts (Redford, 1990). In its turn, this explains why aboriginals have always experienced a particularly hard time, while striving to affiliate themselves with the euro-centric concept of a ‘land ownership’, for example. Therefore, there is nothing particularly odd about the fact that, unlike the majority of White patients, aboriginal patients are being naturally predisposed to adopt a holistic view on what accounts for the actual purpose of a specific medicinal treatment. That is, they tend to think that the foremost purpose of such a treatment is not being solely concerned with alleviating the acuteness of a particular illness’s symptom as ‘thing in itself’, but with ‘healing’. In its turn, the notion of ‘healing’ implies that, contrary to the conventions of the Western orthodox medicine, patients’ physical and emotional well-beings are being fused with each other in an essentially inseparable manner.
Whereas, orthodox physicians think of disease/illness as something that needs to be avoided at all cost, it is in the very nature of holistically minded aboriginal patients to think of their ailing health-condition as such that it being reflective of some higher metaphysical issues. As it was pointed out by Shostak, Jobst and Whitehouse, “(Disease) is the healthy response of an organism striving to maintain physical, psychological, and spiritual equilibrium. Disease is not necessarily to be avoided, blocked, or suppressed. Rather, it should be understood to be a process of transformation” (1999, p. 495). Therefore, it is fully explainable why many aboriginal patients do not express much of an enthusiasm, while being prescribed with intensive drug-therapies – they subconsciously feel that their exposure to these therapies will not result in their ‘healing’. Apparently, the very workings of the aboriginal patients’ psyche make it harder for them to relate to the rationale-based conventions of the Western medicinal paradigm.
Unfortunately, many healthcare workers continue to remain utterly ignorant of this simple fact. According to McBain-Rigg and Veitch, “(Healthcare) practitioners are not acknowledging that Aboriginal patients have needs and concerns, specific to their cultural heritage and historical encounters with medical systems that are different from other patients” (2011, p. 72). This, of course, cannot result in anything else but in slowing down the process of aboriginal patients’ recovery. Therefore, in order for healthcare workers to be able to remain on the path of increasing the extent of their professional adequacy, they should aim at becoming thoroughly acquainted with the aboriginal patients’ cultural legacy. This is because it will not only allow healthcare practitioners to grow ever more appreciative of the aboriginal patients’ ‘otherness’, but will also provide them with a clue as to how should they approach the task of providing these patients with medicinal treatments.
The fact that, as it was mentioned earlier, there is much of a qualitative difference between how non-aboriginal and aboriginal citizens reflect upon the surrounding reality, it will only be logical, on our part, to suggest that while undergoing a medicinal treatment at the hospital, aboriginal patients should be provided with their own quarters. The validity of this statement appears especially self-evident nowadays, when due to the institutionalization of ‘celebration of diversity’ policy, Australia continues becoming ever more multicultural. However, as practice indicates, this often results in aboriginal patients being exposed to different forms of a subtle racism, especially on the part of healthcare workers and patients who profess strongly defined ethno-centric cultural/religious values (Bouma, 1995).
Conclusion
As it was illustrated earlier, gaining awareness of the specifics of the aboriginal people’s cultural legacy should be considered an integral part of the process of healthcare workers becoming ever more professionally adequate. This is because it will not only result in practitioners growing to appreciate aboriginal patients’ uniqueness, but will also prove rather indispensible, within the context of how healthcare workers go about addressing their professional duties. After all, there are many good reasons to think that aboriginal patients will indeed be able to benefit from being treated in a manner thoroughly observant of their cultural anxieties/aspirations. I believe that this conclusion is being fully consistent with the paper’s initial thesis.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012).The health and welfare of Australia’s aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples, 2010. Web.
Bouma, G. (1995). The emergence of religious plurality in Australia: A multicultural society. Sociology of Religion, 56 (3), 285-302.
Esler, D. et al. (2008). The validity of a depression screening tool modified for use with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 32 (4), 317-321.
Jobst, K., Shostak, D. & Whitehouse, P. (1999). Diseases of meaning, manifestations of health, and metaphor. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 5 (6), 495-502.
McBain-Rigg, K. & Veitch, G. (2011). Cultural barriers to health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Mount Isa. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 19 (2), 70-74.
Redford, K. (1990). The ecologically noble savage. Orion Nature Quarterly, 9 (1), 24-29.