Beliefs and Value Systems at a Collision Course: A Faculty Expedition Along a Client Pathway

Purpose: Second-Year Students in the Nursing and Health Sciences Program at Nunavut Arctic College (NAC) are oriented to legal and ethical issues that they integrate into their own cultural framework as they provide healthcare services to their clients. Methods: During a presentation on Traditional Inuit Law in February 2014, students and Faculty were challenged by shared experiences encountered by members of Inuit society as they sought health services within and outside their communities. Concepts evolving from these experiences included cultural issues impacting on client compliance, healthcare disparities, worldviews, and health education (Tilburt, 2010). This conceptual framework influenced a Faculty decision to embark on a two-day educational journey in August 2014 to a variety of key facilities, mostly at a major Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario, where Inuit clients generally access healthcare services. Faculty walked the path of clients with the goal to determine whether (a) the healthcare system and professionals maintain the knowledge and tools required to provide culturally safe and competent client care, assures client confidentiality, privacy and trust, and accords adequate and efficient escort-translator-interpreter services; (b) beliefs and values of healthcare providers and clients are in conflict, influence their worldviews, and contribute to health disparities and health education. Results: Facilities acknowledged successes and challenges; deficiencies in human, financial and material resources; lack of inter-facility coordination and collaboration; overflow of maximum boarding home capacity; inadequate/inefficient escort-interpreter services; language barriers; client opposition to established rules and guidelines, and client anxiety and isolation.  Conclusion: Faculty recognized the need to establish and promote mutual reciprocal and culturally-specific communication practices; better coordination of healthcare services; overcome assumptions of a conflict in cultural and clinical interactions; and observe the Principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or Inuit Traditional Knowledge. The extent to which clients perceive health education as having cultural relevance for them can have a profound effect on their reception to information provided and their willingness to utilize it. Reduction and ultimately the elimination of the negative role healthcare providers play in producing health disparities requires a cultural change which, overtime, will serve to transform their worldviews toward a more self-reflective, humble, and open-minded posture (Tilburt, 2010). The outcome of this expedition was the orientation of Faculty to their own worldviews and the inculcation of these values in their students toward their own ethical foundation in providing culturally safe and competent care to their Nunavut clientele.