Culture includes, but is not restricted to, age or generation; gender; sexual orientation; occupation and socioeconomic status; ethnic origin or migrant experience; religious or spiritual beliefs; and/or ability.
For example, someone who feels unsafe may not be able to take full advantage of a service offered and may subsequently require more intrusive and serious intervention; 3) preparing health care providers to understand the diversity within their own cultural reality and the impact of that on any person who differs in any way from themselves; 4) applying social science concepts that underpin the practice of health care.
It is about relating and responding effectively to people with diverse needs and strengths in a way that the people who use the service can define as safe[4] Cultural safety is broad in its application: 1) recognising inequalities within health care, education, employment and societal interactions that represent the microcosm of inequalities in health, education, employment and society that have prevailed within our nation; 2) addressing the cause and effect relationship of history, political, social, and employment status, housing, education, gender and personal experience upon people who use psychological services; 3) accepting the legitimacy of difference and diversity in human behaviour and social structure; 4) accepting that the attitudes and beliefs, policies and practices of psychological service providers can act as barriers to service access; 5) concerning quality improvement in service delivery and consumer rights.
[5] Irihapeti Ramsden said the woeful state of Maori health was a driving force for cultural safety's introduction into New Zealand's nursing schools.
[10] She also challenged a tutor's claim that pre-European Maori had printing presses which were thrown into the sea by white colonials.
[13] Mr Stabb wrote that "I have experienced it as a racial judgement which carries all the stigmas of the most rabid forms of racism.
They have claimed, among other things, that separate classes were held for Maori and "tauiwi" (foreigners); that Maori students who failed last year were accepted into the second year; that Maori students were allowed to start the course one week before pakeha students because, in the words of a tutor, they had been disadvantaged all their lives and needed that extra week; that students were made to wear signs saying "Pakaitore (Moutoa Gardens) is Maori land" during the course's selection process and risked exclusion if they refused; and that a tutor who had no teaching qualifications spent most of the class time sitting outside smoking and reading the newspaper.
[13] Critics have claimed that cultural safety is based on fanciful quasi-psychological subjects which has resulted in an abandonment of rigorous and theoretical task-based nursing.
[15] Public opposition to cultural safety during the 1990s led to a Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry into its teaching, whilst a simultaneous review was carried out by the NZ Nursing Council.