Section 2 – Key Barriers/Issues Related to Health Professional Licensing Bodies’ Policy and Guidelines for CVD/s-related Standards of Care and Core Competencies

For many Indigenous women, an absence of culturally safe care is a common experience. They are also experiencing mistreatment and racism. For example, in some cases, healthcare practitioners (HCPs) are making assumptions about drug and alcohol use as the cause of illness in the absence of an accurate medical assessment. Also, their traditional medicines, ways of knowing and worldviews are often invalidated (Gomes et al., 2023).

Supplementary Resource: Indigenous Peoples and the Health care Experience Elder Albert Dumont (5:25 in length) Located at an RCPS web link: https://www.royalcollege.ca/en/about/strategic-themes/indigenous-health#heading4

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) in their final report ‘Calls to Action’ called upon medical and nursing schools in Canada to require all students to learn about Indigenous health including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, and Indigenous teachings and practices. Reconciliation is described as a movement to redress the legacy of residential schools in Canada through the TRC’s Calls to Action (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).

Many institutions in Canada charged with leading and delivering health education are engaged in reconciliation response efforts. For example, the Association of the Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) have established an Indigenous Health Network that provides a roadmap for institutional change that will best enable Canadian medical schools to respond to the TRC Calls to Action (Health Canada, 2001).

An important element of this reconciliation work is amplifying the Calls to Actions in the joint quest for policy and educational reform. For example, the Canadian Nurses Association reports that they are dedicated to engaging with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities to enhance the nursing profession by upholding the TRC Calls to Action (Canadian Nurses Association, 2024).