Rethinking cultural safety while waiting to do fieldwork: methodological implications for nursing research.
The concept of culture has been widely applied as an explanatory concept within health care, often within a framework representing culture as a fixed, reified entity, with cultural groups existing in a binary sense vis-;-vis mainstream culture. However, if our scholarship is to generate knowledge that addresses longstanding patterns of inclusion and exclusion along lines such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, interpretive frames are needed that account for culture as embedded in fields of power relations; as mediated by social forces such as economics, politics, and historical patterns of oppression and colonization; and as being constantly renegotiated. In this article we trace a series of theoretical explorations, centered on the concept of cultural safety, with corresponding methodological implications, engaged in during preparation for an intensive period of fieldwork to study the hospitalization and help-seeking experiences of diverse ethnocultural populations.
Kirkham
Sheryl Reimer
SR
Nursing, Trinity Western University, 7600 Glover Road, Langley, British Columbia, Canada V2Y 1Y1.
Smye
Vicki
V
Tang
Sannie
S
Anderson
Joan
J
Blue
Connie
C
Browne
Annette
A
Coles
Ruth
R
Dyck
Isabel
I
Henderson
Angela
A
Lynam
M Judith
MJ
Perry
JoAnn
J
Semeniuk
Pat
P
Shapera
Leah
L
D002170:Canada; D018595:Colonialism; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009520:New Zealand; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000208:ethnology*; D011057:Politics; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards*; D012449:Safety; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016746:Transcultural Nursing / Q000458:organization & administration*