Shaun C Ewen

Griffith University

Health research remains a vital activity of Indigenous health workforces. This paper reports on the main findings of yarning interviews with 14 Indigenous researchers, that was central to a project analysing the role of research training infrastructures in strengthening the Indigenous health research workforce in Australia. The findings highlighted...

Background:Research reporting guidelines are increasingly commonplace and shown to improve the quality of published health research and health outcomes. Despite severe health inequities among Indigenous Peoples and the potential for research to address the causes, there is an extended legacy of health research exploitingIndigenous Peoples. This pap...

Background This paper provides a narrative review that scopes and integrates the literature on the development and strengthening of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health researcher workforce. The health researcher workforce is a critical, and oft overlooked, element in the health workforce, where the focus is usually on the cl...

Introduction: Incongruence between the formal, informal and hidden curricula of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health education is a barrier to student learning and preparedness for delivering effective and culturally-safe healthcare to Aboriginal people. We investigated the impact of student and registrar immersion experiences in an urban A...

The determinants of health inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations include factors amenable to medical education’s influence—for example, the competence of the medical workforce to provide effective and equitable care to Indigenous populations. Medical education institutions have an important role to play in eliminating these i...

Background: Improving access to culturally appropriate mental healthcare has been recognised as a key strategy to address the often greater burden of mental health issues experienced by Indigenous populations. We present data from the evaluation of a national attempt at improving access to culturally appropriate mental healthcare for Indigenous Aus...

Background: To identify the facilitators and barriers to positive medical student placements at Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs). Materials and Methods: A total of 15 focused interviews were conducted with medical students from Victorian universities and staff from two Victorian ACCHSs. Staff and students were asked about th...

Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of Indigenous graduate research students in Australia, yet research and pedagogy has not kept pace with changes underway in the sector. From an extensive search of literature published between 2000 and 2017, 15 papers (representing 10 research projects conducted by seven teams or...

Since 2006 the Australian Medical Council (AMC) accreditation standards have required medical schools to comprehensively address issues related to the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, and Māori in New Zealand. This has spanned areas of staff expertise, staff and student recruitment, curriculum and institutional...

In higher education, assessment is key to student learning. Assessments which promote critical thinking necessary for sustained learning beyond university are highly valued. However, the design of assessment tasks to achieve these types of thinking skills and dispositions to act in professional practice has received little attention. This research...

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to be pathologised in medical curriculum, leaving graduates feeling unequipped to effectively work cross-culturally. These factors create barriers to culturally safe health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In this pilot pre-post study, the learning experiences of seven me...

Indigenous people have long maintained that strong cultural identities are critical to health and wellbeing. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine whether interventions that entail strategies to enable expression of cultural identities for Australian Indigenous peoples are associated with measurable improvements in health and wellbein...

Over the past decade, there has been increasing attention paid to the role of assessment in higher education learning. A core message of these discussions is that the most effective way of changing how and what students learn is to change the way they are assessed (Norton, 2013). This resource on assessment for Indigenous health education is the ou...

Aim The accreditation of medical schools is a key leadership role for the Australian Medical Council (AMC) and its counterparts in other jurisdictions. The aim of our research was to identify how the inclusion of Indigenous health in the accreditation standards has influenced the reporting of activity related to Indigenous health in medical school...

This research paper was reviewed using a double blind peer review process that meets DIISR requirements. Two reviewers were appointed on the basis of their independence and they reviewed the full paper devoid of the authors' names and institutions in order to ensure objectivity and anonymity. Papers were reviewed according to specified criteria, in...

Introduction Attention to Aboriginal health has become mandatory in Australian medical education. In parallel, clinical management has increasingly used Aboriginality as an identifier in both decision making and reporting of morbidity and mortality. This focus is applauded in light of the gross inequalities in health outcomes between indigenous peo...

The Master of Public Health (MPH) is an internationally recognised post-graduate qualification for building the public health workforce. In Australia, MPH graduate attributes include six Indigenous public health (IPH) competencies. The University of Melbourne MPH program includes five core subjects and ten specialisation streams, of which one is In...

With the globalisation of university education, national frameworks are commonly used to prescribe standardised learning outcomes and achieve accountability. However, these frameworks are generally not accompanied by guiding pedagogy to support academics in adjusting their teaching practices to achieve the set outcomes. This paper reports the resul...

In this paper, a new theoretical framework for curricula is proposed as a means of advancing the potential for health professional graduates to contribute optimally in the contemporary world of complex health care. A new theoretical approach to curriculum is needed to provide for a comprehensive and integrated view of the diversity in people and po...

Australian research guidelines emphasise that high quality research into Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander(henceforth Indigenous) health should be conducted in accordance with specific principles. These include: involvement of Indigenous people; making findings accessible; and ensuring that communities benefit from studies in which t...

The Leaders in Indigenous Medical Education (LIME) Network aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of Indigenous health in medical education as well as best practice in the recruitment, retention, and graduation of Indigenous medical students. In this article we explore the utility of Etienne Wenger's "communities of practice" (CoP) concept i...

Disparity in health status and health care outcomes is widespread and well known. This holds true for Indigenous peoples in many settings including Australia and Hawaii. Whilst multi-factorial, there is increasing evidence of health practitioner contribution to this disparity. This research explored senior medical students' clinical decision-making...

Objective: To examine the uptake, population reach and outcomes of primary mental healthcare services provided to Indigenous Australians via the Access to Allied Psychological Services (ATAPS) program between 2003 and 2013, with particular reference to enhanced Indigenous ATAPS services introduced from 2010. Method: Utilising ATAPS program data fr...

The first full-length book to examine the history, theory, methodology and application of hidden curriculum theory to health professional education The hidden curriculum (HC) in health professional education comprises the organizational and institutional contexts and cultural subtexts that shape how and what students learn outside the formal and i...

Purpose: This systematic review examines the literature to identify the context and extent of implementation of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) model to understand the experience of health and functioning in persons with chronic conditions from the person perspective. Method: The literature search was...

Considering the high mortality andmorbidity associated with chronic conditions amongst Indige-nous communities, it is essential to provide Indigenous Austra-lians access to equitable healthcare. Physiotherapists are wellpositioned to play an important role in preventing and managingmany health conditions that are prevalent amongst IndigenousAustral...

The concept of cultural competence has become reified by inclusion as an accreditation standard in the US and Canada, in New Zealand it is demanded through an Act of Parliament, and it pervades discussion in Australian medical education discourse. However, there is evidence that medical graduates feel poorly prepared to deliver cross-cultural care...

Tertiary institutions aim to provide high quality teaching and learning that meet the academic needs for an increasingly diverse student body including indigenous students. Tātou Tātou is a qualitative research project utilising Kaupapa Māori research methodology and the Critical Incident Technique interview method to investigate the teaching and l...

Introduction The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2001 to obtain a comprehensive perspective of health and functioning of individuals and groups. Health disparities exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and there is a need to understand...

"There are multiple factors that influence the quality of health and the health care experience of Aboriginal patients. Some of these factors include health professionals’ clinical decision-making and miscommunication between doctor and patient. A more “culturally competent” health workforce is a recommended strategy in addressing the extensively d...

To undertake a systematic literature review to determine the scope, rationales, and evaluation foci of indigenous health curricula included in university-based professional training of health care service providers. Systematic review. We searched the Australasian Medical Index, ATSIhealth (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography),...

Medical education reform can make an important contribution to the future health care of populations. Social accountability in medical education was defined by the World Health Organization in 1995, and an international movement for change is gathering momentum. While change can be enabled with policy levers, such as funding tied to achieving equit...

The disparity in health status between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia and New Zealand is widely known, and efforts to address this through medical education are evidenced by initiatives such as the Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools' Indigenous Health Curriculum Framework. These efforts have focused primarily on for...

This paper investigates the relationship between the unacceptably poor levels of Indigenous health in Australia, the very low levels of representation (As at 2009, approximately 140 Indigenous medical graduates Australia wide) of Indigenous people within the medical field, and the potential for parrhesia (translated as "fearless speech") to challen...

Introduction: Simulated patient programs are an accepted teaching method within medical education. This paper explores patient simulation as a sustainable and meaningful approach to Indigenous health teaching and learning in medical education.

Cultural safety and cultural competency are concepts which have become embedded in the health science and medical education literature over the past several decades. This paper argues that they are problematic concepts, and proposes an alternative approach of 'cultural literacy'. This paper provides a definition of cultural literacy, and describes...

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to document the processes towards ensuring that all psychiatrists in training in Victoria have appropriate Indigenous mental health experience and training. Conclusions: This paper describes the process of implementation of the 2004 Indigenous Mental Health Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiat...

Both more Indigenous doctors -- for the sociocultural capabilities they bring -- and better sociocultural education of all medical students will be needed to "close the gap"

This presentation describes the use of an online multimedia role play set within the first Aboriginal settlement in Victoria at Coranderrk between 1862 and 1882. Within the role play, post-graduate health students enact six key characters of the period supported by primary historical sources: actual archival newspaper stories, letters, photographs,...

Objective: This article aims to describe the process of implementation of the 2004 Indigenous Mental Health Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) Training By-Laws within Victoria. Conclusions: It is likely that the challenges of ensuring access to this training experience, within the Victorian RANZCP Training Program...

Background: The launch of the Australian National Indigenous Health Curriculum Framework in 2004 has provided a framework and impetus for medical schools in Australia to include an Indigenous health curriculum in their medical courses. To ensure the efficacy of this work, a systematic evaluation of this curriculum needs to be carried out. This pape...

The VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit at the University of Melbourne has just completed delivering three postgraduate subjects in Aboriginal health for the Master of Public Health program for 2004: 'Policy Processes in Aboriginal Health', 'Ethical Practice in Aboriginal Health' and 'Koori Health: Past to Present'. Whils...