Indigenous methodologies and ART by Joanne Whitty-Rogers.
Early in her nursing career, Joanne Whitty-Rogers, RN, PhD, a Senior Research Professor at St. Francis Xavier University, observed that Indigenous women encountered barriers to maternal care such as access to travel to healthcare services, language barriers, racism, and discrimination which often led them to feeling isolated. She went on to learn more of these barriers with the participants in a new study.
When the study on gestational diabetes mellitus began, integrating Indigenous methodologies and Western research was a relatively new approach.
The Mi’kmaw women’s stories revealed that often health care providers lacked respect and understanding of the care they needed when diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus. These experiences changed the way some of the mothers think about the health care system as they no longer trust the health care providers. One Mi’kmaw mother revealed that her confidence in the health care system was shattered when she was prescribed the wrong insulin dosage and as a result almost died. She was emotional and afraid as she described feeling shaky and sick and was concerned that she could have gone into a diabetic coma. This experience reinforced her perception that she was unsafe in healthcare settings.
As a result of these nursing experiences, advocating for healthy outcomes and injustices for Indigenous women and families has become a life long journey for the author. This paper brings different but aligned paradigms of action research and Indigenous approaches to knowledge together in service of women. Nine ‘Research Partnership Principles’ outlined in this paper identify the approaches used to build trust and respectful relationships with Mi’kmaw women. The women collectively decided on actions such as community gardens, walking, eating more traditional foods to improve their health during the study.
We invite you to learn more about this by reading Joanne’s paper which includes free 15 day access without paywall to this article beginning now.
DOI for future reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1476750320960822
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