Journal
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PRIMARY HEALTH
Volume 25, Issue 5, Pages 389-394Publisher
CSIRO PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.1071/PY19044
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Lowitja Institute's 'health service and workforce' research program
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A central strategy in addressing health disparities experienced by Indigenous people has been based on a concern with workforce improvement. In this paper, the Indigenous Australian healthcare workforce literature since 1977 is reviewed and its scope of concern, as being often limited to questions of 'supply', is critiqued. The pipeline metaphor, whether used explicitly or implied, regularly focuses attention on closing the gap on Indigenous representation within the health workforce. The exception though is the discourse concerning Indigenous Health Workers (IHWs), where questions concerning the legitimacy of the role continue to abound within a workforce hierarchy where community knowledge, though shown to be crucial to culturally safe health service provision, is trumped by the other health professions whose knowledges and legitimacy are not in question. This contrast exemplifies the need to examine the working of power not just 'supply'. The pipeline metaphor is disrupted with concerns about a range of other 'gaps' - gaps in the recognition of Indigenous knowledges, in organisational structures, in governance and in self-awareness by the health professions of their whiteness. As the health system continues to measure workforce development in terms of pipeline capacity, our study questions what happens beyond the pipeline.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available