Medical students’ critical engagement with publications related to strategies addressing health disparities with Indigenous Peoples in Australia: critically iterative and iteratively critical

Abstract

Higher education’s contributions to societal transitions can be limited by the inadvertent perpetuation of embedded practices that can be hard to see and taken for granted. Such practices can delegitimise other forms of knowledge and learning, potentially hindering societal transitions. Healthcare’s preferencing objective ways of knowing, including accessing peer-reviewed literature via biomedical search engines, is one such embedded practice. This practice potentially influences medical students’ understandings of Indigenous Peoples health disparities. Extending our collaboration beyond a two-year student research project, our research team of four medical students and three supervisors reconvened. We explored the question: In relation to shaping higher education’s contributions to societal transitions, what is the nature of fostering medical students’ engagement with publications addressing health disparities with Indigenous Peoples in Australia? Based in the interpretive paradigm and informed by philosophical hermeneutics, we present our findings encapsulating themes of positional, interactive and precarious using three stories: students’ research insights; supervisors’ hindsight insights; and collective team’s insights for shaping societal transitions. Being iterative was critical to our deeper understandings. We invite others to join us in revisiting embedded practices in an iterative manner and being open to individual and collaborative critical reflexivity for further opportunities for higher education to contribute to societal transitions.