REFLECTIVE ESSAY

ABORIGINAL REFLECTIVE ESSAY

length: 1500 words (plus or minus 10%). Use headings provided below.

Your reference list must contain a minimum 5 references, 7 years old or less, from a mixture of journal articles, books and credible websites (e.g. Australian Indigenous health info net).

Reflect on the following 3 statements from the questionnaire you took at the start of the unit:

     1)  The presence of more than two family members in a hospitalised patient’s room is disruptive to staff and roommates and should be prohibited

   2)  Aboriginal people, due to their own cultural beliefs and values, have the poorest health status in Australia

 3)  We practice equity in the provision of healthcare by treating Aboriginal people the same as all other clients

Describe and explain your response (agree or disagree or remain neutral) to these statements and consider how the unit content so far has influenced your response. Consider an alternative view and the reasons why other people may have given a different response to you. The focus on your reflection should be how this new knowledge about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ health and wellness has or will impact on how you deliver care in your career.

You may refer to the unit texts, videos or resources as background to your learning but you will need to be specific about which module, chapter or resource influenced your response.

You also need to support your reflection using journal articles, books or audio-visual sources (professional documentaries by credible sources) that are not in the unit content but they must be able to be located via an active weblink and properly referenced. You do not need to use Gibbs reflective cycle or other frameworks for your writing but it will help you if you consider the “What?, So what?, now what?” framework as provided in the first tutorial activity.

Write approximately 500 words for each item.

You may write in first person if you wish but sentence structure, spelling and grammar must be in academic style.

Do not include an Introduction or Conclusion.

For example:

1. Pineapple is an inappropriate topping for Pizza

My initial response to the above statement was that I disagreed with the concept of pineapple being an appropriate pizza topping. This is because fruit is generally sweet (reference) and pizza is generally savoury (reference). In my cultural background, foods that are sweet and foods that are savory are generally eaten separately (reference). However, when I watched the video, Traditional ways of making Pizza (reference), I was encouraged to consider a different perspective. I was surprised to see people enjoying a variety of fruit toppings on their pizza and this challenged me to try pineapple on pizza and to incorporate this new knowledge into my future ways of cooking.