Are Australian Universities Perpetuating the Teaching of Racism in Their Undergraduate Nurses in Discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Courses? A Critical Race Document Analysis Protocol

Keera Laccos-Barrett, Angela Elisabeth Brown, Roianne West and Katherine Lorraine Baldock
Additional contact information
Keera Laccos-Barrett: UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
Angela Elisabeth Brown: UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia
Roianne West: Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, Murarrie, QLD 4172, Australia
Katherine Lorraine Baldock: Teaching Innovation Unit, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-15

Abstract: Systemic racism has a profound negative impact on the health outcomes of Australia’s First Nations peoples, hereafter referred to as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, where racism and white privilege have largely become normalised and socially facilitated. A national framework is being mobilised within the tertiary-level nursing curriculum to equip future health professionals with cultural capabilities to ensure culturally safe, equitable health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In 2019, nurses comprised more than half of all registered health professionals in Australia, and current national standards for nursing state that Australian universities should be graduating registered nurses capable of delivering care that is received as culturally safe. It is therefore critical to evaluate where learning objectives within nursing curricula may lead to the reinforcement and teaching of racist ideologies to nursing students. This protocol outlines a framework and methodology that will inform a critical race document analysis to evaluate how learning objectives assert the social construction of “race” as a tool of oppressive segregation. The document analysis will include each discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health course within all undergraduate nursing programs at Australian universities. The approach outlined within this protocol is developed according to an Indigenous research paradigm and Colonial Critical Race Theory as both the framework and methodology. The purpose of the framework is a means for improving health professional curriculum by reducing racism as highlighted in nation-wide strategies for curriculum reform.

Keywords: Australian Aboriginal; health inequity; racism; race; nursing; education; curriculum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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