Identity matters: Aboriginal mothers’ experiences of accessing health care is a research paper written by Kimberley Anne van Herk, Dawn Smith, and Caroline Andrew. The paper reports explore how the healthcare services providers’ perception of identities of aboriginal women impact their experience in accessing preventive care in the process of pregnancy and parenting. The article illustrates how the perceptions of identity affect therapeutic relationships and emphasizes the need to develop therapeutic relationships with marginalized populations.
According to the authors, Aboriginal people and females, in particular, face discrimination not only for their race and gender but also class due to colonization, which resulted in several disadvantages, including economic and political disadvantages and social inequity for the Aboriginal people. The authors state that aboriginal people frequently face discrimination even when attempting to obtain care, which compromises their ability for good health. The authors explain the decision to cover the aspect of motherhood as authors consider it an intersecting point of assessing care in an urban setting.
In the article, the authors implied a participatory approach of research to ensure that the research is done ‘with’ participants and does not base on the description of previous negative encounters. The research paper includes a secondary analysis on the issues of identity in access to healthcare. The authors suggest that society overlooks the aspect of what it is about the health care providers that make it difficult for Aboriginal females to feel safe. The article proposes an idea that hiring a diverse nursing workforce would help in terms of representing the diversity of the population they serve. The paper defines the need to develop therapeutic relationships with marginalized populations and educate the nursing staff on the power relations of identity and how it shapes the oppression and discrimination within care.