Cultural Safety Training for Students Involved in an Immersive Indigenous Field Study Course: Value Change Towards the Tenets of Cultural Safety

The concept of cultural safety has been adopted by Indigenous health literature and health agencies alike as a successful means to go a step beyond cultural competence by incorporating self-reflection and acknowledging oneself as a bearer of culture. This phenomenological research study seeks to establish value change in undergraduate students associated with the tenets of cultural safety; exposure to personal and external community narratives through immersive experience in an ‘Aboriginal’ Mental Health Field Study Course facilitates this value change. In order to elicit subjective information, a qualitative design will be employed. Through the review of student narratives obtained through personal journals, and participation in semi-structured interviews, interpretive phenomenological analysis will be employed to identify shifts towards culturally safe values, if any. It is important for aspiring mental health professionals to learn cultural safety in order to mitigate the marginalization of Indigenous peoples and ‘culturally unsafe’ practices within healthcare. Cultural safety value change among students will lead to more culturally safe individuals and mental health practitioners entering the field of psychology.