Cultural Safety in Dangerous Times: Ruth De Souza

Tuesday 30 June 2020
1–2pm

Online

It is a dangerous time.

COVID19 has shown us that we are vulnerable to a virus. But some of us are more vulnerable than others. The pandemic has laid bare our vulnerabilities and the inequities that accompany them, in particular the impacts of everyday racism. From the overrepresentation in the deaths of people from Black and minority ethnic communities in Britain, to concerns about the xenophobia and racism being experienced by people who appear Chinese. Amid the romanticising of health professionals as heroes, have also been glaring instances of institutional racism. More recently, people have eschewed edicts to physically distance themselves, to gather in rage and solidarity about police brutality in the US and Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia.

In this presentation, Ruth De Souza will talk about one framework for addressing institutional racism developed by Indigenous Māori nurses called cultural safety. Originally developed to counter “unsafety” for Māori, it has expanded to consider other axes of difference including class, sexuality, gender, disability and more and is embedded in nursing education in Aotearoa, New Zealand and has recently become part of the Australian Nursing Code of Conduct.

Ruth will also talk about how she has operationalised the concept of cultural safety in her research and practice and explores what it means for her in Australia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr Ruth De Souza is a highly experienced multidisciplinary educator, researcher and consultant, specialising in cross cultural engagement, cultural safety, and the interface of digital technologies within CALD communities. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia and has published work on community engagement in the arts. Ruth is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor's Fellow, based in the School of Art and a member of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform (ECP). Her fellowship project aims to engage health professionals in finding new ways to understand, co-design and implement sustainable cultural safety initiatives in a range of health contexts. Ruth has extensive networks across the Melbourne creative industries and is on the Fair Play project reference committee.

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