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On October 26, 2017, the Royal College’s Council endorsed a resolution proposed by the Indigenous Health Committee of the Royal College (IHC) to include Indigenous health across all residency training programs, a step towards fulfilling the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, including numbers 23 and 24.

The IHC, an independent body that comprises Indigenous physicians, scholars and other health care professionals, led the development of two flagship documents that underpin the Royal College’s actions to improve Indigenous health.

• The Indigenous Health Primer (2019) provides core information about Indigenous health through stories and case studies of Indigenous experiences and essential knowledge for Fellows, health care providers, learners and educators in caring for Indigenous Peoples.
  
  Download the primer (pdf)
• The Indigenous Health Values and Principles Statement, Second Edition (2019) examines the values pertaining to Indigenous health and bridges these values to the CanMEDS framework with actionable principles that guide culturally safe health care.
  
  Download the Indigenous Health Values and Principles Statement (pdf).

Additionally, the Royal College recommends the following resources to all on a journey to become a culturally safe provider to Indigenous patients: The San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety online training:

• Increases knowledge of the history of Indigenous people in Canada
• Builds self-awareness of biases and assumptions
• Strengthens the skills of those who work both directly and indirectly with Indigenous people to ensure they have access to culturally safe care

The overall goal is to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous people and close the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous British Columbians

Core Indigenous Cultural Safety Health training is designed for health authority and Ministry of Health employees as well as other professionals working in the health care field. This training was developed in British Columbia, but portions of the training are relevant across Nations. 

This training is designated as an accredited self-assessment program by the Royal College for up to 8.0 section 3 credits as defined by the maintenance of certification (MOC) Program.

Enrollment in Faculties of Medicine

• 2003     1.0% out of a population of 3.8% (2006 census)
• 2016     2.7% out of a population of 4.3% (2011 census)

See the San’yas homepage for further detail: http://www.sanyas.ca/