Indigenous Cultural Safety Training for Applied Health, Social Work and Education Professionals: A PRISMA Scoping Review

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackgroundAnti-Indigenous racism is a widespread social problem in health, social work, and education systems in English-speaking Colonized countries such as Canada, with profound negative impacts to the health and education of Indigenous peoples. In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognized the legacy and impact of Colonization and recommended training programs for these professions on cultural competency and curricula, and on the colonial history of Canada. Yet there is little evidence on best practices for such training, highlighting the need to synthesize existing findings on how these training programs are developed, implemented, and evaluated.MethodsThis scoping review explored the academic literature on Indigenous cultural safety and competence training in the health, social work, and education fields. Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, ERIC and ASSIA were searched for articles published between 1996-2020 in Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The Joanna Briggs Institute’s three-step search strategy was used as was the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews. Data was charted and synthesized in three stages.Results134 were included in this review. Data was extracted on four themes: 1) Article Characteristic; 2) Cultural Safety Concepts, Critiques and Rationale; 3) Characteristics of Cultural Safety Training; and 4) Evaluation Details of Cultural Safety Training. Findings suggest that research on cultural safety training programs in health, social work and education has grown significantly. Nursing and medicine professions have received a significant proportion of cultural training programs, compared with general/allied health, social work, and education. Across fields, professionals and students were targeted equally by training programs. Only half of evaluations of cultural safety and related intervention identified methodological limitations.ImplicationsConsidering, comparing, and contrasting literature on cultural safety and related concepts and how they are applied in practice would advance this scholarly work, as would more robust evaluations of cultural safety and similar training interventions to understand their impact at the individual level. Finally, commitment to meaningfully engage Indigenous communities to develop, implement and evaluate such programs is urgently needed.