The social consequences of industrial accidents : disabled mine workers in Lesotho

No abstract providedGR 201

The experience and meaning of dementia : Aboriginal elders in urban Australia

Dementia is a global phenomenon, although described predominantly in Western diagnostic terms. Remote-living Indigenous Australians have substantially higher rates of dementia than the general Australian population. Prevalence in urban Indigenous Australians is as yet unknown and research is lacking into the dementia experience of older Indigenous people. This study is about the lived experience of ‘dementia’ in an urban indigenous setting and a reinterpretation of what people have been living with, as part of contemporary reality and cultural memory. Family members of indigenous people with dementia will be interviewed over time to map an experience trajectory and data will be re-interpreted in relation to, ‘culturally derived and historically situated interpretations of the social life-world’ (Crotty, 1998). How is dementia configured and imagined and where are we, study’s participants and myself, in this process? Forums with Elders groups will uncover community narratives of dementia. This presentation addressed the impetus behind my choice of research methodology, evolution and context of the study, its purpose and potential application

Overseas Trained Doctors in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services: A Literature Review

The recruitment of medical practitioners to rural and remote areas as well as to other underserved communities is an international problem. In the Australian context, the burden of health professional shortages is most acutely felt in Indigenous communities, a constituency with profound economic, social, demographic and health disadvantage by comparison with the general population (Armstrong and Van der Weyden 2005; Turrell and Oldenburg 2004), and by contrast to other Indigenous groups in comparable countries (Lavoie 2004; AMA 2004). This has implications for the provision of both government and community-controlled health services to Aboriginal communities. Increasingly, the majority of doctors being recruited to address critical shortages in health system delivery are overseas trained. Despite this, there is little information addressing the extent to which overseas trained doctors are employed in providing services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their professional and social experiences within these practice environments, and the experiences and impact of their employment on health services to Indigenous Australians. The Review considered all relevant research and policy published in both the peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed literature. This was restricted to literature published from 1994, so as to capture the critical policy initiatives impacting on the recruitment and employment of overseas trained doctors introduced from the mid-to late nineties. Judgements about the quality of the research and associated methodologies were not undertaken as part of this review. Given that the topic encompassed several broad subject areas, it was necessary to draw only on information that related to the key objectives of the research, and drew on reviews already conducted, in order to synthesize large subject areas. This is presented in a thematic format

Finding my researcher voice : from disorientation to embodied practice

This chapter is an account of how 'being-in-question' in the lived experience of questioning itself changes the shape of research inquiry. 'Being-in-question' elucidates a process for bringing to light the significance that lies beneath the research endeavour. That is, the element that drives a research undertaking forward and gives expression to its practice intentions. My aim in this chapter is to describe and offer some thoughts on the experiential learning that took place, primarily in the first half of a doctoral journey, as a non-Indigenous researcher engaged in a study of experience and meaning in caregiving, ageing and dementia with family members of an older Aboriginal person in urban New South Wales

Dis(cover)ing experience and meaning in ‘dementia’ : Aboriginal elders in urban Australia

Dementia is a global phenomenon, although predominantly described in Western diagnostic terms. In remote-living Indigenous communities in Australia, dementia is almost five times as prevalent and presents at an earlier age than in the non-Indigenous population. There is no data on dementia prevalence in non-remote Aboriginal communities, and empirical research is lacking into the dementia experience in Indigenous populations. This study will investigate the lived experience of ‘dementia’ amongst Indigenous people in an urban setting. How is dementia configured and imagined? The research aims to examine the experiences and meanings of dementia in families with a dementia sufferer, its perception in the broader community, as well as, the social and cultural context in which formal (government and community) and informal (family) care giving and care seeking are experienced. Its starting point is how ‘dementia’ is lived and acted in concrete situations, and as such, a phenomenological orientation and methodology has evolved. Carers of Indigenous people with dementia will be interviewed over time to map an experience trajectory and enable participants to reflect on the meaning of their accounts. Through a process of reflection and ‘meaning making’, by both study participants and the researcher (myself), the data will be (re) interpreted in relation to, “culturally derived and historically situated interpretations of the social life-world”. Interviews with Elders groups will uncover community narratives of dementia. This presentation will address the impetus behind my choice of research methodology, including, the evolution of the study’s research questions, purpose, approach and potential application

Collective Healing for Members of the Stolen Generations: Summary Report: National Workshop, 1–2 September 2015, Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach

This report summarises the outcomes of a national workshop on collective healing for Stolen Generations members and their descendants, held in September 2015 and funded by the Healing Foundation. Its contents reflect the collective knowledge and experience of ten organisations from around Australia that received funding for projects under the second or third rounds of the Healing Foundation’s Stolen Generations Initiative

Overseas-trained doctors in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services : many unanswered questions

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services are heavily dependent on overseas-trained doctors (OTDs). These OTDs are increasingly from countries with variable English language and educational equivalency compared with locally trained doctors. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services create particular demands for all doctors, such as negotiating "cultural domains" and acknowledging the contribution of Aboriginal health workers. Little is known about the roles and experience of OTDs in health service provision in Indigenous communities. Barriers to effective research into the experience of OTDs include privacy legislation and a lack of standardised data. Researching the narratives of OTDs in Indigenous health services offers an opportunity to explore the diversity and complexity of the cultural interfaces in health service provision

'Between Shadow and Light': A hermeneutic inquiry of Aboriginal families' meaningful world of caring, ageing and dementia

Dementia in Australia's Indigenous population is an area of growing public health concern with prevalence rates three to five times higher than for the non-Indigenous population. In both ageing populations, Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia are the two most common causes of dementia. A number of scholarly paradigms traverse the dementia field. This range shifts from the portrayal of dementia in predominantly Western diagnostic terms on the one hand, to cultural approaches for Indigenous populations on the other. This thesis highlights the 'lived relation' of research in the human encounter of the ageing and dementia experience. The study began with the centrality of the family caregiver in an Indigenous 'world' of ageing and dementia and then moved into a focus on 'being-in-research' in this complex space. The study used the methods of in-depth conversational interviews with family caregivers, 'yarning circles' with carers and community members in a group setting, and detailed journaling to facilitate critical thinking. Phenomenological, existential and hermeneutic analysis and writing techniques were used to take the reader deep inside the immersive space of these 'worlds'. The study approached the scholarship as a philosophy and methodology and as an existential method for 'being-in' the practice of the research. The work drew on the way time and history are expressed in human experiencing which resonates deeply with Indigenous thought. The study provides original research in an area of growing public health concern and contributes to an emerging literature on the experience of carers in Australia, in particular, the experience of Aboriginal carers in urban communities. It recognises the importance of reflexivity in developing researcher presence for the complexity and richness of research and practice in both the dementia and Indigenous health fields

Ageing, Cognition and Dementia in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples: A Life Cycle Approach

Dementia is emerging as a global phenomenon, although it is predominantly defined in the literature as a, ‘Western diagnostic category’. There is general acceptance that ‘Culture’, namely, values, practices and beliefs, play an important role in understanding dementia, from uncovering risk factors for the disease, in particular, the interplay of environmental and genetic factors (Burchard, Ziv et al. 2003), to influencing what has been described as, “help-seeking behaviours”, across different populations (Dilworth-Anderson and Gibson 2002). In Aboriginal communities, both in Australia and other comparative societies, what we know about the nature and extent of dementia, and of its sub-types, is still in its infancy, as is knowledge about the experiences, perceptions and meaning of dementia for Aboriginal people, the causes of, and risk factors for cognitive decline, and the need for and provision of dementia services (Pollitt 1997; Jervis and Manson 2002; LoGiudice, Smith et al. 2006). This Report is a review of the literature to-date on dementia in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. We reviewed the research in comparable Indigenous communities internationally as well as dementia research in non-Indigenous populations, both nationally and internationally, to illuminate cognitive development, growth and decline across the life-cycle and its application to the ‘brain health’ of Indigenous Australians. The Review was conducted over a three year period between late 2006 and 2009