In Indigenous communities, Wendy feels that having a continuous and local presence is necessary
Transcript
It takes a long time and it also takes presence. It takes presence in the community as well as it’s something that once the trust – it’s always on a continuum and it’s always part of the journey and the trust is always revisited, every time. It’s not – you don’t get to a place where we have trust now and now we can move forward, you’re always revisiting it. And that’s the other interesting thing that sparked me to think about the difference between an individual and a community because many of the indigenous peoples they see – their concept of an individual is much more as a group so it’s not an individual’s participation in research it’s the community’s participation; so it involves many, many more people and I mean you can’t be getting the voice from everyone all the time or the – I shouldn’t say the voice, because you are.
You’re really – you’re getting a group voice, but you can’t be getting consent from everyone all the time, you have individuals that you’re working with but they’re speaking-. It’s often for the community and decisions are made, like we have a project right now where we’re working with a community and we are choosing, we’re actually adapting some western interventions to be culturally safe for this First Nations community, but it’s the community that’s going to pick the interventions based on all the criteria that we as knowledge translation investigators or scientists look at. You know we look at the level of research evidence and we look at the fit and the barriers and the facilitators to implementing it and all those; but they are doing it from a community perspective so other things comes into play as well like the fit, the fit in the context with the culture and the rhythms and the flow of the community.
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- Measuring Impact of Partnership – WendyIn her work with Indigenous partners, Wendy believes it’s important to ask the community about the change they would like to see
- Improving Patient Care and Experiences – WendyWendy realized that there is a lack of trust in Western research by Indigenous communities
- Challenging Experiences – WendyWendy realized that she doesn’t always need to take the lead and can be guided by community partners when working together
- Looking forward – WendyFrom her experience, Wendy highlights the need to adapt research knowledge to Indigenous realities.
- Advice to others – WendyNot presuming they know what’s best for communities, is an important starting point for researchers says Wendy
- Skills for partnership – WendyWendy believes that patients have expertise about needs that researchers may be lacking
- Relationship building – Wendy (2)In Indigenous communities, Wendy feels that having a continuous and local presence is necessary
- Relationship building – WendyWhen engaging community partners, Wendy says to expect that timelines may not go as planned
- Defining partnerships – Wendy (2)Partners or community partners are the terms that Wendy uses to describe the people she works with in the community
- Defining partnerships – WendyWendy constantly reaches out to the Indigenous community she is working with for input