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Asher, Meghan

University of British Columbia

Ongoing systemic and explicit racism in Canadian healthcare systems is linked to the health disparities of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. As directed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, educational institutions and healthcare organizations are called to implement training for health professionals to reduce racism and enhance cultural safety within healthcare settings. Cultural safety recognizes and attends to the impact of cultural differences between individuals and organizations, and such differences can create power dynamics and feelings of safety or unsafety. Influenced by social justice, critical theory, and constructivism; cultural safety has relevance in neocolonial societies and acknowledges the historical and current multi-layered contexts in which people interact. This qualitative research study explores the potential of an arts-based assignment for learning Indigenous cultural safety in an undergraduate nursing program. Student-participants’ experiences were explored and interpreted using phenomenological inquiry. The data obtained through a discussion group and individual interviews were analyzed using theoretical perspectives of transformative learning theory (a theory that surfaces how changes in people’s perspectives can be achieved through learning) and critical consciousness (the ability to critically analyze social conditions and act to change them). Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, this research aims to illuminate the subjective experiences of participants in their process of critical reflection, transformative learning, and movement toward critical consciousness. The results show that the arts-based reflective assignments in undergraduate nursing programs offer opportunities for emotional processing, questioning assumptions and values, creating meaning, and enhancing discussion and connection among nursing undergraduate students. Participants showed clear indicators of transformative learning, developing critical consciousness, and the desire to put their learning into action. My findings support the use of arts-based reflection assignments for Indigenous cultural safety and led to recommendations for enhancing its educational value: Emotionally safe and supportive learning environments, normalization of creative processes, structured group discussions, and adding greater contextualization for the process of arts-based learning. Finally, I suggest future research to further understand arts-based and creative learning strategies, the role of emotions, identities, and hope in cultural safety learning, and the long-term impacts of these learning modalities for Indigenous cultural safety education.

Text

2025-04-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/84419

Nursing

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/