Strengthening Indigenous Cultural Competence Curricula: Academic Perspectives

Objectives: Despite numerous closing-the-gap initiatives, Indigenous peoples in Australia still experience poorer health including oral health. Cultural competence of practitioners is essential to health care and life quality in addressing health disparities. Authorities recognise the need for tertiary institutions to incorporate Indigenous culture more widely into universities to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous peoples and to increase cultural competence of staff and students. This study aimed to define and explore current integration of Indigenous cultural competence in dentistry and oral health higher education curricula, to inform future Indigenous cultural competence curricula development.

Methods: Academics in the Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) and Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) programs at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Sydney, participated in semi-structured interviews to explore barriers and enablers for the integration of additional Indigenous cultural competence.
Results: A total of 13 dental faculty staff participated in in-depth interviews. Thematic data analysis was performed resulting in 5 key themes: Knowledge Transfer, Cultural Immersion, Required Resources, Appropriate Content and Ethical Considerations.

Conclusions: Careful integration of Indigenous cultural competency curricula using a combination of didactic training, self-reflection and cultural immersion strategies would provide opportunities to increase cultural competency knowledge and skills of dentistry and oral health students.