Annette J. Browne

Rewriting Cultural Safety Within the Postcolonial and Postnational Feminist Project Toward New Epistemologies of Healing

The concept of cultural safety, developed by indigenous nurses in the postcolonial climate of New Zealand, has not been widely examined in North America. In this article we explicate the theoretical and methodological issues that came to the forefront in our attempts to use this concept in our research with different populations in Canada. We argue that this concept prompts us to “think critically” about ourselves and our patients, and to be mindful of our own sociocultural, economic, and historical location. This critical reflection has implications for how we live, relate to one another, and practice in our various professional disciplines. On the basis of our findings, we discuss how the concept might be rewritten within a critical postcolonial and postnational feminist discourse.

First Nations Women’s Encounters with Mainstream Health Care Services

Health care encounters are important areas for study because they reflect social, political, economic, and ideological relations between patients and the dominant health care system. This study examines mainstream health care encounters from the viewpoint of First Nations women from a reserve community in northwestern Canada. Perspectives from critical medical anthropology and the concept of cultural safety provided the theoretical orientation for the study. Critical and feminist ethnographic approaches were used to guide in-depth interviews conducted with 10 First Nations women. Findings were organized around two broad themes that characterized women’s descriptions of “invalidating” and “affirming” encounters. These narratives revealed that women’s encounters were shaped by racism, discrimination, and structural inequities that continue to marginalize and disadvantage First Nations women. The women’s health care experiences have historical, political, and economic significance and are reflective of wider postcolonial relations that shape their everyday lives.

‘Race’ matters: racialization and egalitarian discourses involving Aboriginal people in the Canadian health care context

The major purpose of this paper is to examine how ‘race’ and racialization operate in health care. To do so, we draw upon data from an ethnographic study that examines the complex issues surrounding health care access for Aboriginal people in an urban center in Canada. In our analysis, we strategically locate our critical examination of racialization in the ‘tension of difference’ between two emerging themes, namely the health care rhetoric of ‘treating everyone the same,’ and the perception among many Aboriginal patients that they were ‘being treated differently’ by health care providers because of their identity as Aboriginal people, and because of their low socio-economic status. Contrary to the prevailing discourse of egalitarianism that paints health care and other major institutions as discrimination-free, we argue that ‘race’ matters in health care as it intersects with other social categories including class, substance use, and history to organize inequitable access to health and health care for marginalized populations. Specifically, we illustrate how the ideological process of racialization can shape the ways that health care providers ‘read’ and interact with Aboriginal patients, and how some Aboriginal patients avoid seeking health care based on their expectation of being treated differently. We conclude by urging those of us in positions of influence in health care, including doctors and nurses, to critically reflect upon our own positionality and how we might be complicit in perpetuating social inequities by avoiding a critical discussion of racialization.

Critical cultural perspectives and health care involving Aboriginal peoples

Despite a growing body of critical scholarship in nursing, the concept of culture continues to be applied in ways that diminish the significance of power relations and structural constraints on health and health care.In this paper, we take a critical look at how assumptions and ideas underpinning conceptualizations of culture and cultural sensitivity can influence nurses’ perceptions of Aboriginal peoples and Aboriginal health. Drawing on examples from our research, we examine how popularized assumptions about culture can shape nurses’ ideas about the context of Aboriginal health, and views of Aboriginal patients. These assumptions and perceptions require closer scrutiny because of their potential to influence nurses’ practice with Aboriginal patients. Our specific aims are to: (a) consider some of the limitations of cultural sensitivity in relation to health care involving Aboriginal peoples;(b) explore how ideas about culture have the potential to become problematic in nursing practice with Aboriginal peoples; and(c) explore the relevance of a ‘critical cultural approach’ in extending our understanding of culture in relation to Aboriginal peoples’ health. We discuss a critical cultural perspective as one way of broadening nurses’ understandings about the complexities of culture and the many facets of culture that require critical consideration. In relation to Aboriginal health, this will require nurses to develop greater critical awareness of culture as a relational process, and as necessarily influenced by issues of racism, colonialism, historical circumstances, and the current political climate in which we live.

Toward a critical theoretical interpretation of social justice discourses in nursing.

Despite widespread appeals to social justice, nursing conceptions of this ideal have been critiqued as incomplete and inconsistent. With the aim of contributing to a critical dialogue on discourses of social justice in nursing, we explore contemporary theories of social justice and their move beyond a distributive paradigm, employing techniques of replication and critique of social justice discourses in nursing. We consider how postcolonial feminist theory can help us understand the relevance of more recent critical interpretations of social justice, particularly in reinterpreting and broadening nursings individualistic focus on social justice so that due consideration and actions are directed toward the intersecting impact of historically and socially mediated conditions on health and human suffering.

Access to Primary Care From the Perspective of Aboriginal Patients at an Urban Emergency Department

In this article, we discuss findings from an ethnographic study in which we explored experiences of access to primary care services from the perspective of Aboriginal people seeking care at an emergency department (ED) located in a large Canadian city. Data were collected over 20 months of immersion in the ED, and included participant observation and in-depth interviews with 44 patients triaged as stable and nonurgent, most of whom were living in poverty and residing in the inner city. Three themes in the findings are discussed: (a) anticipating providers’ assumptions; (b) seeking help for chronic pain; and (c) use of the ED as a reflection of social suffering. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the role of the ED as well as the broader primary care sector in responding to the needs of patients affected by poverty, racialization, and other forms of disadvantage.

Examining the potential of nurse practitioners from a critical social justice perspective

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are increasingly called on to provide high-quality health-care particularly for people who face significant barriers to accessing services. Although discourses of social justice have become relatively common in nursing and health services literature, critical analyses of how NP roles articulate with social justice issues have received less attention. In this study, we examine the role of NPs from a critical social justice perspective. A critical social justice lens raises morally significant questions, for example, why certain individuals and groups bear a disproportionate burden of illness and suffering; what social conditions contribute to disparities in health and social status; and what social mandate NPs ought to develop in response to these realities. In our analysis, we draw on lessons learned from the initial Canadian experience with the introduction of NPs in the 1970s to consider the renewed and burgeoning interest in NPs in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. As we argue, a critical social justice perspective (in addition to the biomedical foci of NP practice) will be essential to sustaining long-term, socially responsive NP roles and achieving greater equity in health and health-care.

Inequities in health and healthcare viewed through the ethical lens of critical social justice: contextual knowledge for the global priorities ahead.

The authors use the backdrop of the Healthy People 2010 initiative to contribute to a discussion encompassing social justice from local to national to global contexts. Drawing on findings from their programs of research, they explore the concept of critical social justice as a powerful ethical lens through which to view inequities in health and in healthcare access. They examine the kind of knowledge needed to move toward the ideal of social justice and point to strategies for engaging in dialogue about knowledge and actions to promote more equitable health and healthcare from local to global levels.

Harms and benefits: Collecting ethnicity data in a clinical context

Although ethnicity data are collected in most countries at the population level, it has become more common to collect such data in healthcare settings, partially in response to growing health and social inequities worldwide. However, the implications of doing so have not been studied. This two-year study was designed to critically examine the implications of collecting ethnicity data in healthcare settings. Using a critical ethnographic approach, we interviewed 104 patients, community and healthcare leaders, and healthcare workers within diverse clinical contexts in a large city in Western Canada in 2006-2007. This paper presents an interpretive thematic analysis, using an ethical lens, of the harms and benefits associated with the process of data collection in a clinical context. While most leaders and healthcare workers and some patients envisioned potential benefits associated with having ethnicity data, these benefits were seen as largely contingent upon action being taken to ameliorate inequities. Overwhelmingly, however, leaders from ethno-cultural communities and patients of diverse identities anticipated potential harm arising both from having ethnicity data and the process of collection. The analysis illustrates that in todays sociopolitical context, collecting ethnicity data in clinical contexts may engender considerable harm, particularly for racialized, vulnerable patients. If ethnicity data are currently collected at the population level, evidence of benefit is required before proceeding to collect these data at the point of care.

Critical inquiry and knowledge translation: exploring compatibilities and tensions

Knowledge translation has been widely taken up as an innovative process to facilitate the uptake of research-derived knowledge into health care services. Drawing on a recent research project, we engage in a philosophic examination of how knowledge translation might serve as vehicle for the transfer of critically oriented knowledge regarding social justice, health inequities, and cultural safety into clinical practice. Through an explication of what might be considered disparate traditions (those of critical inquiry and knowledge translation), we identify compatibilities and discrepancies both within the critical tradition, and between critical inquiry and knowledge translation. The ontological and epistemological origins of the knowledge to be translated carry implications for the synthesis and translation phases of knowledge translation. In our case, the studies we synthesized were informed by various critical perspectives and hence we needed to reconcile differences that exist within the critical tradition. A review of the history of critical inquiry served to articulate the nature of these differences while identifying common purposes around which to strategically coalesce. Other challenges arise when knowledge translation and critical inquiry are brought together. Critique is one of the hallmark methods of critical inquiry and, yet, the engagement required for knowledge translation between researchers and health care administrators, practitioners, and other stakeholders makes an antagonistic stance of critique problematic. While knowledge translation offers expanded views of evidence and the complex processes of knowledge exchange, we have been alerted to the continual pull toward epistemologies and methods reminiscent of the positivist paradigm by their instrumental views of knowledge and assumptions of objectivity and political neutrality. These types of tensions have been productive for us as a research team in prompting a critical reconceptualization of knowledge translation.