Furthering Cultural Safety in Kidney Care Within Indigenous Communities: A Systematic and Narrative Review

Cultural Safety is being prioritized within health care around the world. As a concept, Cultural Safety centers upon power relations between health providers and indigenous recipients of care, ensuring that all people feel safe and respected in the health care system. In this article, we explored the breadth of the literature regarding Cultural Safety within the context of indigenous kidney health care.

As a systematic narrative review, this work engaged widely across a diverse range of the available literature to broaden understanding of Cultural Safety within indigenous kidney health care and indigenous populations from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.

Guided by the research question focused on how Cultural Safety occurs within care for indigenous people with kidney disease, an initial database search by the university librarian resulted in retrieval of 2,232 articles, of which 96 potential articles were screened by the research team.

15 articles relevant to the research question were identified and study findings were assembled within 3 broad clusters: relationality, engagement, and health care self-determination; systemic issues, barriers, and access; and addressing legacies of colonialism for health care providers.

The review summarizes mainly qualitative articles given the paucity of articles found specific to Cultural Safety within indigenous contexts.

Of particular interest to health care providers are the collation of solutions by cluster and the findings of this review that contribute to further understanding of the concept of Cultural Safety in health care for indigenous people with kidney disease. Also, findings address the importance of community-driven kidney care in which language, ways of knowing and being, and traditional ways of healing are prioritized.