What Is The Good Health – Your Password Was Changed

Loads of medical professionals get annoyed and expect them to speak English, and through their own ignorance and bigotry shan’t try to understand that person, aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people speak many languages, of which English is only one. For sake of example, not giving appropriate immunisations can put the patient at risk of flu and akin diseases, Likewise, doctors who question a person’s Aboriginality can put a patient at risk. Another woman from quite similar facility, the Plain Trees Group Home, died in similar circumstances at the Campbelltown Hospital in February 2016. Case ain’t an isolated incident. New South Wales Coroner is currently looking into a discrimination complaint regarding a disabled Aboriginal woman who died in a Sydney emergency department.

Indigenous patients need people who know and understand us.

We need to be able to feel safe when we go to a hospital.

Being that, while I am relieved to say that the incident I described turned out alright for me in the end, others have not been so lucky. Actually, while listing all my hospital admissions and medications, the paramedic asked me questions about my health, completely overlooked my brain tumour, despite the fact that I had a folder full of information for health professionals. Anyway, on one occasion, my eye was bleeding and an ambulance had been called. I have a brain tumour that affects both my eyes. Besides, he ok one look at my bleeding eye, said the words brain tumour, and I was rushed into surgery, when the doctor finally came for me.

By the way I was kept waiting for hours, as blood soaked into the wel I had pressed against my eye, when I arrived at the emergency department. Nobody checked on me. That’s a fact, it’s common for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to suffer, both physically and emotionally, at the hands of those who are supposed to care for them. Therefore this lack of care plays into worsening health outcomes -how can you get better if you feel unwanted and unwelcome in a hospital or at your local GP? This is the case. Entrenched racism lies at the bottom of the need for better Indigenous health services, Indigenous Hospital Liaison officers, and Cultural Awareness Training for medical professionals. Certainly, as if they are faking pain to get painkillers, plenty of Indigenous people complain of hospital staff denying them pain relief or abusing substances. Add to that, patients and their family members speak of being denied for ages being that Aboriginal people are still wrongly thought to have a higher pain threshold.

Indigenous city folk are also at risk, And so it’s not only people from remote and regional communities for awhile time have have been for a long have been for a have been for quite some time demeaned and their culture ignored to the detriment to their health.

Spare a thought for the Traditional man in a city hospital who is washed by a female when he has specifically asked for this not to happen -it goes against culture.

While laughing at the idea they also have cultural mores to follow, lots of people assume that the Indigenous person, who lives in the city, is devoid of culture. I’m quite sure I have seen and experienced shocking racism within the medical system ‘first hand’, as a Aboriginal person living with cancer. They have higher death rates, and when you see how we are treated, with that said, this should come as no surprise, Indigenous people are less going to be diagnosed with cancer than ‘nonIndigenous’. So here’s the question. Should Masaly have had better treatment if she didn’t come from a Aboriginal community?