Health professional perspectives on translation of cultural safety concepts into practice: A scoping study.
Lynere Wilson, Amanda Wilkinson, Kelly Tikao
PMID 36189045WHAT IT FOUND
Health professionals described translating cultural safety into practice through direct community experience, personal relational skills, and training that addressed racism, history, discomfort, and workplace application.
Key findings
01Twelve qualitative studies of 206 health professionals and students identified three themes: learning through direct experience, individual qualities, and cultural training.
02Helpful cultural training content included racism, discrimination, colonization, and application to practice; helpful process included collaborative design, learner community, and support for discomfort.
03Health professionals said learning through experience needed time and discomfort, and building relational skills and tolerating discomfort was necessary for culturally safe practice.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The included studies were qualitative and reported health professionals' perspectives, not patient outcomes or tested changes in practice. The search was broad but single-author screening and appraisal, with only 20% appraised by a second author, may have missed studies. The review did not use terms such as cultural humility or name all professions, so relevant literature may be missing. It did not include perspectives of professionals who do not engage with cultural safety. Themes overlapped and were not cleanly separable, as the authors note. Most included studies operationalized culture as race or ethnicity, and only one defined culture, limiting transferability.
Declared interests
Publication of this work was supported by the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies. The authors declared no commercial or financial relationships.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the themes as evidence that cultural safety training improves patient outcomes. This review summarizes health professionals' perspectives from qualitative studies; it did not test an intervention or measure patient health.