Writing reflexively to illuminate the meanings in cultural safety

Abstract

With the introduction of cultural safety into nursing curricula, educators are grappling with ways to take their own understanding of the concept to create culturally safe places in their educational environments. The purpose of this paper is to share a process of writing as inquiry to surface new meanings in what might ontologically be understood as culturally safe environments. The writing illuminates individual and collective meanings of cultural safety from the perspectives of eight Canadian nurse educators. Using aesthetic texts and hermeneutic approaches, the meaning of cultural safety is exposed. Fluid depictions of the self as other, along with politicized taken for granted practices and multiple fields of meaning, bring clarity to a view that knowledge is always partial. Since knowledge is co-constructed, situated and socially produced, the representations of our evolving stories and cycles of reflection hold to an element of partiality in epistemological privilege The various texts shared offer insight into thinking about culturally safe spaces as horizons of new meaning. The implications for nursing education are in recognizing locations for both the educators and the learners. These writing and interpretive processes can be integrated into curricula to strengthen reflexive and relational practice.