Bringing Yindyamarra into workplace learning experiences in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs)

Background:
A core component of delivering high quality health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in both the Aboriginal community controlled health sector and mainstream health services is ensuring cultural safety for patients and families. As a member of the Rural Health Education team strategically located within the Three Rivers University Department of Rural Health (TRUDRH) and co-located within a regional university, we are uniquely positioned to promote and support innovative and high-quality rural student placement experiences and linkages to cultural responsiveness in our footprint. The context is rural workplace learning experiences in ACCHOs.
What is known is the need for culturally safe placements.
What is not known is how to develop culturally safe placements using co-design with ACCHOs
Aim
To explore the use of Yindyamarra to inform engagement with ACCHOs to co-design health student placements. ‘Yindyamarra’, a Wiradjuri word meaning being polite, being gentle, being respectful, and doing slowly. By utilising ‘Yindyamarra’ within this space we developed trust and interprofessional relationships to provide opportunities for students undertaking placements to learn and deliver culturally safe health care.
Method:
A mixed ethnographic methodology was used with a focus on interactions between student-student, student-supervisor, student-clients and student-organisation as to whether the specific goals around partnership concepts, professional skills and qualities were evident to provide an unmet service need.
With a focus on ACCHO participation within the TRUDRH footprint, community needs and purposeful student preparedness and orientation to develop culturally safe placements. This focus will be gauged by the number of students placed within ACCHO’s across the TRUDRH footprint.
We identified health service gaps that allowed us to co design a placement that involved a service learning project to provide allied health services within 2 separate ACCHO’s to provide care otherwise unavailable within that service. This will be measured by increasing the number of ACCHO’s that will provide student placements in the future.

Implications:
The goal of this session is to report on the strategies, ideas and initiatives that were utilised in the co design of student placement opportunities within 2 ACCHO’s within the WNSWLHD over the past 12 months.
The anticipated outcomes of this research within the ACCHO space is the significant impact that collaborative practice, improved access to services for the community can have on improvement of health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as well as increased professional satisfaction for both students and clinicians.