Objective. To determine how US and Canadian pharmacy schools include content related to health disparities and cultural competence and health literacy in curriculum as well as to review assessment practices. Methods. A cross-sectional survey was distributed to 143 accredited and candidate-status pharmacy programs in the United States and 10 in Canada in three phases. Statistical analysis was performed to assess inter-institutional variability and relationships between institutional characteristics and survey results. Results. After stratification by institutional characteristics, no significant differences were found between the 72 (50%) responding institutions in the United States and the eight (80%) in Canada. A core group of faculty typically taught health disparities and cultural competence content and/or health literacy. Health disparities and cultural competence was primarily taught in multiple courses across multiple years in the pre-APPE curriculum. While health literacy was primarily taught in multiple courses in one year in the pre-APPE curriculum in Canada (75.0%), delivery of health literacy was more varied in the United States, including in a single course (20.0%), multiple courses in one year (17.1%), and multiple courses in multiple years (48.6%). Health disparities and cultural competence and health literacy was mostly taught at the introduction or reinforcement level. Active-learning approaches were mostly used in the United States, whereas in Canada active learning was more frequently used in teaching health literacy (62.5%) than health disparities and cultural competence (37.5%). Few institutions reported providing professional preceptor development.
Conclusion.The majority of responding pharmacy schools in the United States and Canada include
The purpose of this study is to identify the extent of implicit and explicit bias in a sample of pharmacy students and to determine if there is an association between implicit bias, explicit bias, and responses to clinical cases. Methods. Investigators sent links to two online surveys to students. In the first survey, students responded to two clinical cases. Students were presented with a picture of a white or Black patient with each clinical case. Students indicated on the second survey their level of racial implicit bias as assessed by the Harvard Implicit Association Test and their level of racial explicit bias. Pearson's correlation was used to determine the correlation between bias and responses to the clinical cases. Results. Three hundred and fifty-seven first, second, and third year of pharmacy students responded to both surveys (response rate 52%). The students presented with the picture of a Black patient rated the patient's pain and the reliability of the patient's family as higher than students presented with the picture of a white patient. Students had more negative implicit and explicit bias towards Black patients. Neither implicit nor explicit bias correlated with student responses to the clinical cases. Conclusion. Evidence of slight to moderate negative implicit bias and slight negative explicit bias towards Black patients does exist for pharmacy students. Future studies that include a more representative student population and heighten the stakes of the clinical scenario should be done to investigate a possible correlation between bias and clinical behaviors.
Background: Faculties that teach cultural competence are in a great position to identify training gaps and improve the depth of teaching for pharmacy students.
Objective: To assess the perspective of faculty on their perceived confidence and extent of teaching cultural competence (CC) content in the pharmacy curricula.
Methods: A cross-sectional study using an adapted version of the Self-assessment of Perceived Level of Cultural Competence (SAPLCC) questionnaire. Data analysis included factor-level and item-level analysis using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results: Out of the 70 study participants, 77.1% were female and the average age was 47.97 (±10.52). Faculty with prior training reported a higher level of confidence to teach CC content in three areas, “addressing population health needs” (p = 0.007), “ recognising disparity-related discrimination” (p = 0.017), and “recognising social determinants of health” (p = 0.03). The faculty’s years of experience had a positive impact on both the extent of teaching CC and confidence.
Conclusion: Study findings indicate a gap to address training needs for faculty development on CC to prepare students for an increasingly diverse patient population.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.