“Teaching in Circle” with student nurses contributes to experiential understanding of Cultural Safety

Background: Cultural safety is mandated for Australian nursing practice and education. Cultural safety privileges the knowledge of the client, who determines whether healthcare is culturally safe. Understanding and learning cultural safety requires critical self-reflection to expose clinicians’ assumptions, unconscious biases, beliefs and actions, and their impact on clients. More research is required on best-practice strategies on how students learn about cultural safety in nursing education. Experiential pedagogical methods may be one such strategy to promote understanding of principles that underpin safe environments. Objectives: To explore the influence of “Teaching in Circle” to enhance students’ understanding of cultural safety within the classroom environment. Methods: Students in first-year undergraduate Bachelor of nursing units participated. Teachers facilitated tutorials using a respectful adaptation of “Teaching in Circle” methodology; it was underpinned by the principles of Yarning, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples way of learning and communicating in groups. Students developed principles to guide the facilitation of a more culturally safe classroom, providing written feedback on the environment and their participation in the circle. Results: Student feedback was reflected in three themes: “Journey through unfamiliar territory”; “More personable way of learning and sharing” and “Relational engagement creates safety”. Student perspectives resonated strongly with the principles of cultural safety or lack of within healthcare settings. The method disrupted normative classroom/learning environments and supported experiential learning about the principles of cultural safety. Conclusions: “Teaching in circle” provided an experiential means of enhancing first-year nursing students’ understanding of the principles of cultural safety. This learning should be embedded in the nursing curriculum and on-going education to prepare nurses to provide culturally safer care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The study supports similar research calling for innovative learner-focused, experiential methods for the development of the practice of cultural safety in Australian nursing education. Impact statement: Exploratory research project, “Teaching in Circle” with student nurses contributes to experiential understanding of cultural safety principles.