Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet Kellydiscrimination that affect the health and well being and health seekingbehaviour of many Aboriginal women.The need for respectful two way relationships and healing in health careencounters can be easily overlooked by health professionals, managers,policies and health system structures, particularly when other aspects of careare prioritised. For example, selective primary care programs that focus onimproving physical health issues may over look the importance of buildingpositive and trustworthy relationships with clients. Without improvedinterpersonal relationships between health professionals and Aboriginal clients,the health care program may not be interpreted as culturally or personally safe.The Aboriginal women in this Collaboration Area specifically identified theneed for health professionals to take the time to build respectful relationshipswith them in order for them to trust enough to attend programs and services.When co-writing a conference presentation about this issue the women and Isummarised this concept as Time + Respect = Trust.The importance of friendliness and friendshipSimilarly the Aboriginal women co-researchers stressed the importance offriendliness and friendships in postcolonial Australia. They discussed thatwhen meeting new health professionals, they sought signs of friendliness andapproachability before opening themselves to a client-professional relationship.If the health professional hid most of their personality behind a cloak ofprofessionalism, and were unreadable, they found this very off putting andchose carefully what they would or would not disclose. Friendliness became abenchmark to determine if the health professional was someone they couldform a trustworthy relationship with. They did not expect health professionalsto become friends (although this did sometimes occur); but they did seekreassuring signs of friendliness for true engagement. One woman related thatfor her, the need for such relationships stemmed from past experiences ofchildren being taken away in the Stolen Generation. She inherently distrustedhealth and education professionals until she had built positive relationshipswith them. This became obvious in the parenting courses and the discussionsthe women had afterwards. Until the worker was deemed to be safe (i.e. that201