The following are just a few examples of useful links and resources related to intercultural communication. Many of these suggestions come from two excellent websites:
http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/default.asp
Culture and Health Care. Health Department of Western Australia. 1996. A useful resource manual dealing with various topics of interest to health care professionals.
Resource Kit for People of Non-English Speaking Background (NESB). Queensland Transcultural Mental Health Centre Tel: (07) 3240 2833
Cultural Diversity: A Guide for Health Professionals. 1998. Allotey P, Manderson L, Nikles J, Reidpath D, and Sauvarin J. Queensland Health, Brisbane.
Qld Health 1997 Managing cultural diversity in mental health. Train-the-trainer package for the delivery of in-service training to mental health professionals.
Queensland Centre for Cross-cultural Development (QCCCD) 1997 Working with Interpreters. A training module for Queensland Health.
The Queensland Interpreter Card Model language services strategy and guidelines.
Queensland Health, Department of the Premier and Cabinet 1998 Cultural Diversity in Hospital. Report of The Prince Charles Hospital Health Service District Cross-cultural Health Care Project.
The Queensland Multicultural Health Policy Statement includes but is not limited to the Indigenous population. This includes the Queensland Health Language Services Policy Statement which relates to individuals and groups from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds including those who communicate with sign language such as Auslan. (see http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/pdf/multicul.pdf) These standards are supported by detailed guidelines and educational materials to facilitate their achievement (see below).
In addition to the communication policies and standards developed by
Queensland health, guidelines and educational material have also bee developed
to support their implementation. The three components are:
Cultural Diversity: A guide for health professionals which provides a
starting point to an understanding of cultural and health issues for ethnic
communities in a multicultural Queensland (see http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/cultdiv/default.asp).
Guidelines to practice: Providing care to patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds which is a guide to identifying and responding to cross-cultural issues in health care delivery. This material is specifically developed for non-Indigenous groups but provides a possible model for development of a similar web-site specifically for Indigenous health care in the NT. (see http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/interpreters/interprtng_trnsltng.asp).
Checklist for Cultural Assessment: A brief guide to interpreting, communication,
attitudes and cultural assessments. http://www.health.qld.gov.au/multicultural/checklists/default.asp).
This could also provide a useful starting point for the development of
appropriate checklists as part of the Sharing the true Stories Intercultural
Communication web-site.
Guidelines for working with medical interpreters:
http://www.ethnomed.org/ethnomed/clin_topics/intrprt.html
Gropper RC 1996. Culture and the clinical encounter. An intercultural sensitizer for the health professions. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press
A more extensive listing of websites containing multilingual health material
can be found on the website of the Centre for Culture Ethnicity & Health:
http://www.ceh.org.au/
The Royal Australian College of Physicians has developed a guide which
aims to highlight the deficiencies in health care provision and services
between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations of Australia and
New Zealand. The guide is an ongoing, ever changing module, which will
constantly be updated to provide Medical Practitioners and Educators with
easy to find details and information about Indigenous health in Australia
and New Zealand (including communication).
http://www.racp.edu.au
This cultural education resource was developed many years ago but is one of the few to provide extensive detail on communication specifically related to one group of Australian Aborigines. http://www.medicineau.net.au/AbHealth/contents.html
This 170 page curriculum is a toolbox of materials for teaching culturally
competent skills needed for practical day-to-day encounters between clinicians
and patients. The materials organized can be adapted for sequential one-hour
sessions or for daylong seminars. The goals of the curriculum are to teach
participants to recognize when cultural differences exist in patient encounters
and it also teaches specific communication skills to elicit their patients'
cultural perspectives about health and illness.
http://futurehealth.ucsf.edu/cnetwork/resources/curricula/diversity.html
Cultural competence: A journey is another web-based educational resource
which can be found at:
http://www.hrsa.gov/culturalcompetence/curriculumguide/
This section of the Diversity Rx Web site (Resources for Cross Cultural Health Care, Silver Spring, MD) has an extensive list of medical interpretation resources and references. http://www.DiversityRx.org/HTML/MORES_SMI.htm
This is the Web site of MultiLingual Health Education Net that among
other services, provides a database of multilingual materials from a variety
of national agencies and tools to assess the translated materials.
http://www.multilingual-health-education.net
An online journal concerned with a wide range of intercultural communication
issues can be found at http://www.immi.se/intercultural/
Aboriginal Resource and Development Services (phone: (08) 8982 3444 Email: admin@ards.com.au Website: http://www.ards.com.au run courses and publish resources which are relevant to communication with Aboriginal people of Northeast Arnhemland.