The coronial inquest of Ms. Dhu’s death, an Aboriginal Australian, shows that the medical personnel who examined her at the hospital provided “deficient” care to her. The young woman was taken to the hospital twice and cleared by medics as fit for detention, but her situation did not improve. She was reported dead in the emergency room when the police returned her to the hospital for the third time. Evidence shows that both the police and hospital staff treated her discriminatively due to her cultural roots. Reports indicate that a doctor at the emergency department said that Ms. Dhu exaggerated her pain while another claimed she had behavioural issues.
The medics, therefore, failed to take her seriously and give her the care she required based on preconceived beliefs about Aboriginal people. Her death shows the danger of biased practice in healthcare delivery, which can lead to loss of lives. This is a problem Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have to face often in hospitals where they face discrimination based on their cultures. Differential treatment of patients based on their ethnicity is a bad culture that has thrived for long in many Australian hospitals. As a medical practitioner, it is critical to remain focused on one’s responsibilities and roles to the patient.
Several factors contribute to culturally unsafe care, including the individual values of healthcare providers. In Ms. Dhu’s case, the doctors held the wrong perceptions about her, which may have been influenced by the claims of the police that the woman was pretending to be in pain. Professionals in the medical industry should be able to put identify individual values that may affect their service delivery and work on putting them aside during work. Doing so ensures all people irrespective of their cultures can access quality healthcare.