Bridging historical understanding with culturally safe nursing and midwifery care for indigenous people: a scoping review's telling gap in literature.

Abstract

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to explore the need for historically informed, culturally safe nursing and midwifery literature about Australian Indigenous people.

Background: The cultural safety framework, developed by Irihapeti Ramsden, has long identified the importance of historical literacy in delivering culturally safe nursing and midwifery care. However, little evidence is available exploring the links between these domains. In the Australian setting, this is particularly relevant due to the health gap and, therefore, life differentials between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and the potential of culturally safe nursing and midwifery care to contribute to rectifying this.

Methods: A scoping literature review was conducted by searching four databases for both articles and grey literature that explored historically informed, culturally safe nursing and midwifery practice for Indigenous people internationally. This search spanned from 2003 onwards and required discussion of clinical practice by registered nurses or midwives. A discursive method was utilised to analyse the discourse surrounding these domains.

Results: The review found only two texts that explored the connection between Indigenous peoples, history, cultural safety, nursing and midwifery in depth. This highlights a large literature gap internationally. Following this review, a discursive argument was created that highlights how a lack of culturally safe, historically informed care in Australia has resulted in unsafe and racist health experiences for Indigenous people.

Conclusions: Australian nurses, midwives, healthcare organisations and health academics are provided with recommendations on how they can create the mandated cultural safety through historically informed environments and care practices. These include but are not limited to, ongoing Indigenous-led professional development, appropriate remuneration for Indigenous knowledge holders, and professional development for all nursing and midwifery academics.