Building Cultural Safety and Capabilities in the Burn Services of The Children’s Hospital at Westmead: A Pilot Study

Health systems built on Western philosophies of health are not culturally safe for First Nations people. Cultural competency courses developed for Australian health services tend to be a single event and fail to achieve real reflexivity and shift to culturally safe service provision. This study aimed to implement and evaluate a pilot training program on Cultural Safety and Capabilities, delivered to health professionals in the burn services at a tertiary paediatric hospital. An interactive program using Indigenous learning processes was developed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers in partnership with line-managers from the burns services. Evaluation included a validated questionnaire to measure health professional’s attitude change and open-ended questions. Participants expressed high satisfaction with the immersive content and gain of skills to improve practice. Despite high motivation, time constraints and competing priorities were highlighted as obstacles for program completion. Immersive and interactive training programs like this one have the potential to achieve deeper learning, genuine reflexivity and changes in practice. Support from higher levels of executive management and flexible program delivery are needed to ensure ongoing access to training. Further research with stronger sample sizes and follow-up response rate is needed to objectively assess transformative learning and changes in attitudes.