Upon talking to various medical staff on my rural placement who have major roles in indeginous care I wanted to raise a point of discussion. Previous attitudes, in a nut shell, have been that we as trained individuals need to go out and care for people that cant care for them selves or do not have the medical knowledge to optimise their health them selves. Population health has different theories. There is a current shift with in the health system to withdraw from passive health care and place medical professionals in more health promotion roles as opposed to clinical care.
Although this shift in mentality is going to be a gradual process, for both parties, the carers/ health system and the indeginous communities. I was recently visiting a community with the community health nurse and we came across a little boy who had cut his foot badly on a rock. His carer yelled out from the verandah if we had some things in the care and if we could bandage the boy. The nurse replied, No, I do have a bandage in the care that I can give you and then you can bandage him up. You can see from this simple example that the attitude is going to take a while to change but with graudal persistance may shift.
I found that shifting the responsibility back to the aboriginal people is a recurring theme in rural areas and not only in health. Not only should we teach them to bandage etc.. themselves, but we need to continue to educate them on other health issues to prevent the spiraling health decline in indigenous australians.
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