Many nursing programs in Quebec address little or not at all Aboriginal health in their school curriculum, giving rise to fears that the abuses of the health system decried in recent years will continue.
“We saw it with Joyce Echaquan, racism against the Natives can kill”, launches the Dre Raven Dumont-Maurice, Algonquin pediatrician, in reference to the Attikamek woman whose death under the insults of caregivers is the subject of a public inquiry.
And unfortunately, the pediatrician is convinced that the training of future nurses is too minimal to make a difference in their relationships with First Nations patients, whether Métis or Inuit.
Recommendation not followed
However, the report of the Viens commission, published a year ago, underlined in broad outline the importance of including a component on Aboriginals in the college training pathways leading to professional practice.
In the wake of Joyce Echaquan’s death at Joliette hospital, The newspaper asked about twenty CEGEPs to detail the number of hours devoted to content concerning Aboriginal realities in the context of their nursing technique.
Of the 11 who responded to us, none offers a specific course on this subject.
At the Cégep de Granby, we “teach inclusion in a general way, without paying particular attention to one diversity or another”, while the Cégep de Chicoutimi leaves this awareness to the discretion of its teachers.
Even establishments closer to Indigenous territories like those of Baie-Comeau or Sept-Îles do not have classes on the schedule that focus solely on the realities of First Nations, notes Dre Raven Dumont-Maurice.
Other CEGEPs say they touch on the subject.
“We cannot look at the medical aspect without having a basis in history”, summarizes the Dre Dumont-Maurice. For example, Indigenous babies are hospitalized with pneumonia seven times more often than others.
“It’s a purely medical problem, but you have to see the social issues behind,” says the specialist, recalling the overcrowding of many unhealthy and poorly ventilated social housing in the Far North.
All in one basket
Holder of the Indigenous Research Chair in Nursing at the University of Montreal, Amélie Blanchet Garneau notes that CEGEPs tend to group Indigenous people with other minorities in a course of the “intercultural approaches” type, as has been done since. the 1960s.
“We are all put in the same basket, while the First Nations, Métis and Inuit have a really distinct history,” indignant Isabelle Wallace, a Maliseet nurse whose master’s thesis focused on the integration of content. Aboriginal people in nursing.
Mme Blanchet Garneau recalls the importance of developing the critical awareness of future health professionals.
A new generation is at work
Quebec can count on the invaluable expertise of some fifty more indigenous doctors thanks to the help of a little-known program.
“Ever since I was little, I dreamed of being a doctor. But I don’t think I would have made it without this program, ”says Emmanuelle O’Bomsawin, of Abenaki origin, who will soon receive her diploma as a psychiatrist.
Eight years ago, with a child and a master’s degree in nursing in hand, she was admitted to Université Laval through the First Nations and Inuit of Quebec Physician Training Program (PFMPNIQ).
Thanks to this initiative, up to six places out of approximately 900 are reserved each year for Indigenous students in one of the four university faculties in Quebec that offer the program in medicine.
Not easy
The obstacles standing in the way of some of these aspiring doctors – studies in a second language, non-traditional educational path, distance – complicate their admission to a doctorate which is extremely limited.
This is why this program wanted to create a gateway to enable them to access it and thus contribute to diversifying the profile of the profession.
“It doesn’t necessarily take an R score of 34 to do well in medicine,” says Sophie Picard, from the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Health and Social Services Commission, which manages the program.
The Huron-Wendat manager also points out that only two students have left the program out of the 54 admitted through the PFMPNIQ since its creation in 2008.
Do your part
The Dre Raven Dumont-Maurice, 33, is one of those graduates.
Native of the Algonquin community of Kitigan Zibi, in the Outaouais, she now practices pediatrics at the Kanesatake health center.
“I really like to work [à Kanesatake], but returning to my community is an idea close to my heart, ”she admits.
She says she is torn by the desire to treat her loved ones, like many doctors who go through the PFMPNIQ and choose to work with Aboriginal patients, whether in communities or in urban areas.
–
