Childbearing Cambodian Refugee Women

© Canadian Nurses Association. Reproduced with permission. Further reproduction is prohibited.The goal of this study was to discover cultural knowledge held by Cambodian refugee women in regard to conception and fetal development and how this might relate to birth control use and prenatal care. Maternal-child issues are important due to the higher than average birth rate in this population.Ye

The Slave Lake fires, May 2011 : lessons learned

Recommendations for community preparedness and mitigation in the wake of the Slave Lake Fire of 2011.This document is based upon the interviews and community fieldwork completed in the Slave Lake region in the first year after the wildfires. The purpose is to share the lessons learned related to the recovery of the community and its citizens

Understanding and Application of Culturally Diverse Issues Within University Settings

This qualitative study focused on exploring the knowledge and beliefs of university faculty, staff and students regarding: the effects of multi-culturalism and immigration on their professional lives; the influence of cultural issues within the university setting; and, finally, the teaching and learning needs of culturally diverse students. The major findings include the limited knowledge base held by all groups in the sample about multi- culturalism and immigration with subsequent little effect on their professionall lives. However, of the three groups, the student group more readily recognized that they have little preparation for the multicultural interactions that will occur in their future professional practices. Although some faculty members included other teaching experiences and strategies to expose students to diversity, they also admitted to a lack of expertise in this area.Cette étude qualitative explore les connaissances et les convictions des professeurs, du personnel universitaire et des étudiants en ce qui a trait aux effets de l'immigration et de la diversité culturelle sur leur vie professionnelle, à l'influence de la question culturelle dans l'environnement universitaire, ainsi qu'aux besoins liés à l'apprentissage et la formation des étudiants de cultures diverses. Les résultats essentiels indiquent la piètre connaissance qu'ont ces différents milieux des questions touchant la diversité culturelle, ce qui a pour corrélat une absence apparente d'influence de cette diversité sur leur vie professionnelle. Toutefois, sur l'ensemble des trois groupes consultés, les étudiants semblent plus prompts à reconnaître leur absence de formation en la matière: ils se sentent peu préparés aux interactions pluriculturelles inhérentes à leur vie professionnelle à venir. Bien que quelques professeurs intègrent à leur enseignement des stratégies et des expériences variées afin d'exposer les étudiants à la diversité culturelle, ils reconnaissent également un manque de compétence spécialisée dans ce domaine

Health care for the Mexican Mennonites in Canada

© Canadian Nurses Association. Reproduced with permission. Further reproduction is prohibited.The basic story of Canadian Mennonites is well known: During the centuries since the founding of the Mennonite church in Holland in the 1500s, religious persecution has led to group migration throughout Europe and to North America. Mennonites who came to Canada settled mainly in southern Ontario and the western provinces, where they maintained their religious practices, language, education and agrarian lifestyle. Less well known is that, in the 1920s, when the Canadian government mandated that all schools must use the provincial school curricula, some conservative Mennonites chose to leave Canada for Mexico, where they had been promised religious and educational freedom.Ye

Critical ethnography, cultural safety, and international nursing research

Critical qualitative methodology provides a strategy to examine the human experience and its relationship to power and truth. Cultural safety is a concept that has been applied to nursing education and practice and refers to interactions that acknowledge and respect the unique cultural background of patients. It recognizes power inequities between caregivers who belong to dominant cultures and patients who may belong to oppressed groups. Culture is interpreted from a critical constructivist perspective as a fluid relational process that is enacted contextually. The purpose of this paper is to examine the congruence between and among critical methodology, cultural safety, and the conduct of nursing research in low- and middle-income countries by nurses from high-income countries. It is argued that if cultural safety is important and relevant to education and practice, then it might be appropriate to address it in research endeavors

Immunization rejection in southern Alberta: a comparison of the perspectives of mothers and health professionals

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) appliesQualitative grounded theory was used to compare and contrast the understanding and decision-making process of non-immunizing mothers and health professionals’ perceptions of these mothers’ understanding and decision-making process. The sample comprised 8 mothers with purposefully unimmunized children under the age of 6 years and 12 health professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the data generated were analyzed using data immersion, memo-writing, and 3 stages of coding. The mothers and health professionals identified similar, interrelated factors influencing the mothers’ decision, categorized into 4 groups: emotions, beliefs, facts, and information. Three primary themes were evident: the health professionals emphasized the influence of religion in decision-making to a greater extent than did the mothers, the meaning of evidence appeared to differ for mothers and health professionals, and mothers revealed a mistrust of health professionals. Immunization is a public health issue; collaboration and understanding are necessary to promote positive health outcomes in children.Ye

The concepts of resiliency: Theoretical lessons from community research

Resiliency is a concept for which both its appeal and frustration comes from the elasticity of its meaning. The idea of resiliency commonly has been found in areas of human development and psychopathology, there is now an increased interest in extending its application. Community resiliency is increasingly a central element in public health policies and programs. In what follows, we strive to identify some central theoretical issues that arise when the concept of resiliency is applied to communities. Our purpose is to work through these issues in a way that clarifies the concept by bringing together useful, though otherwise disparate, strands from the research literature.Special thank you to Barry Edginton for allowing us to post this article.Ye

Participatory action research with a group of urban First Nations grandmothers: decreasing inequities through health promotion

Open access; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.Inequities experienced by Aboriginal people in Canada due to residual effects of colonization and assimilation are evident; research is needed focusing on positive strategies for health and healing in urban settings. Participatory action research (PAR) is identified as an appropriate method of research for engaging collaboratively with Aboriginal people. This study involved seven First Nations grandmothers in a small urban community in Alberta, Canada. The grandmothers linked personal health with family and community health,and practiced health promotion through maintaining cycles of support between themselves, their families, and communities. These grandmothers recognized their invaluable roles as leaders in health promotion in families and communities. The collective knowledge of Aboriginal grandmothers has potential to affect health inequities on a broader scale.Ye

Mental health beliefs and practices among Low German Mennonites: application to practice

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to identify the cultural and religious understandings and beliefs related to mental health wellness and illness in general among the LG Mennonites, with the intention of applying what was learned to assist in the development and deployment of more appropriate healthcare services for the LG Mennonite communities

Diversity in rural communities: palliative care for the low German Mennonites

Open access articleMulticulturalism is an important concept in Canada although there has been limited examination of its meaning in rural settings. To expand this knowledge base, this article presents the Low German (LG) Mennonites as a case example within a context of providing palliative care to this diverse population which is one of the Anabaptist groups that practice adult baptism and focus on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Findings from a mixed methods study and a graduate thesis conducted within the framework of this study focus on three main ideas to understand the perspectives related to death and dying among this group: faith-based healthcare facilities; family, community and mutual aid; and, keeping the dying connected. Implications of these concepts to health and social service providers are included. Canada has prided itself in being a multicultural country, but there has been little indepth examination of cultural or religious diversity in rural settings. This article presents the research related to understanding death and dying among the Low German (LG) Mennonites as a case example to illustrate the complexity of providing care to a unique religious group in rural Canada. The mixed methods and qualitative research were conducted in both Canada and Mexico. The findings are presented according to the following three ideas: (1) faith-based healthcare facilities; (2) family, community and mutual aid; and, (3) keeping the dying connected. The significance of the findings for the provision of care of this group are also included.Ye