Aboriginal Cultural Practices

The Aboriginal Cultural Practices App for Health Care Professionals is a free, iOS app developed to support health care staff to provide culturally responsive care services for Aboriginal patients. Created in partnership with local First Nation communities in the Vancouver region, the app gives access to cultural guidelines that aim to help health care staff understand and work with Aboriginal health practices and beliefs.

Whether you’re a physician, nurse, social worker or allied health care professional, this free Aboriginal Cultural Practices app can help you find clear, in-depth and specific information about Indigenous values, practices and concepts around health now available at your fingertips on your mobile device. Our Aboriginal Cultural Practices app compiles more than a dozen topics in an easy to use navigation menu, and includes entries on:

Health
Spiritual practices,
Cultural valuables
Family support
Information/communication
Body parts,
Hair
Family support,
Traditional healing and medicine,
Traditional foods,
Organ donation,
Discharge planning,
Birth & Death.

Other features include:

· A search function that allows users to find information quickly with a next and back function to help locate the right page with ease.
· Staff note pop up window that describe each protocol in detail in an easy to find format.
· Information on our Aboriginal Patient Navigators who are a resource for acute care staff.
· Information, including key contact details, for First Nation communities around Vancouver as well as coastal communities.
· A glossary of terms and a description of more than 20 common Indigenous cultural practices such as potlatch, medicine wheel, healing circle, smudge and pipe ceremony.

If you’re a health care professional that provides care to Aboriginal patients, this Aboriginal Cultural Practices App is the perfect app for you to learn and become familiar about Indigenous ways of healing and show Aboriginal patients and their families that they can feel safe and confident in their treatment and care within our health system.