Following the recent publication of the Plan to implement the necessary changes in health by the Government of Quebec, the next generation of medical professionals would like to express their concerns regarding the obvious lack of representation of issues related to Aboriginal health in this plan. this.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
Although we agree with the objectives of this refoundation plan and with the majority of the proposed changes, we firmly believe that the absence of solutions aimed at reconciliation, cultural security and Aboriginal representation in health cannot be ignored. It should also be noted that, according to the call-to-action follow-up committee of the Commission of Inquiry into Relations between Indigenous Peoples and Certain Public Services in Quebec (CERP), none of the 34 calls to action have been carried out. nowadays. Moreover, as of April 11, 2022, only 106,099 health network employees had completed cultural safety training, or approximately 33% of all network workers.
Systemic Racism and Indigenous Underrepresentation in Health
However, the finding is clear: racism and discrimination against Aboriginal people in the health care system are documented realities that contribute to health inequalities between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people.
These inequalities manifest themselves in the access and quality of health care, which can be explained by the lack of culturally adapted services and the under-representation of Aboriginal people in the health system.
It is in wanting to be part of the reconciliation that the Quebec Student Medical Federation (FMEQ) wrote a brief on cultural security and Aboriginal representation among the next generation of medical professionals. A review of the literature, a review of various key players and a discussion group with several Aboriginal medical students highlighted several issues, including the existence of barriers to access to medical studies and the lack of recognition of systemic racism in healthcare. Young Aboriginal people face several barriers to accessing medical studies, including the lack of Aboriginal role models in the field of health, the existence of financial barriers to medical studies and the significant lack of knowledge of the Faculty Program Medicine for the First Nations and Inuit of Quebec (PFMPNIQ).
In addition, 34.9% of medical externs who responded to the survey had been exposed to at least one situation of racism or discrimination towards an Aboriginal patient by a health care staff member.
Moreover, half consider the quality of their current training to meet the needs of First Nations and Inuit patients and clinical exposure to be unsatisfactory. Although Aboriginal health curricula have been improved and clinical exposure has increased in recent years, constant work is needed to train future physicians taking into account the needs of Aboriginal communities.
Calls to Action
The medical future would like to call our government and our faculties of medicine to action. More specifically, the FMEQ calls on our government to recognize systemic racism against Indigenous people, to accelerate the training of health personnel on the issues of cultural safety, to carry out the CERP’s 34 calls to action on health and of social services, to support Aboriginal communities in their efforts to retain health workers in remote communities, to support the creation of the natural sciences program at Cégep de Kiuna and to increase the number of places in the programs of medicine for First Nations and Inuit. The next medical generation is ready to be part of the reconciliation and we must hope that the various decision-making levels of our health system are too.