Developing a Co-Curricular Activity to Introduce Student Pharmacists to the Cultural Proficiency Continuum Framework

Abstract

Background: As the United States becomes more culturally diverse, health professionals must be able to demonstrate competency in caring for a multitude of diverse patients. The cultural proficiency continuum has proven to be an effective framework to assess where individuals and institutions are on the continuum of cultural sensitivity and competence in educational settings.
 Innovation: A co-curricular activity was developed as an exercise in self-awareness to allow first year pharmacy students the opportunity to explore potential biases by evaluating comfort in both social and patient care settings. The 90-minute activity employed a lecture, followed by both small and large group discussions and a debriefing session.
 Findings: Student survey responses showed their appreciation of this framework and its application to patient-centered care. Student self-rated knowledge increased by 3 points on a 10-point scale after completion of the activity. Students agreed that their level of cultural awareness would lead them to respond appropriately in cross-cultural situations, and that the provision of care is dependent on approaches that are culturally proficient.
 Conclusion: This activity dismantles the misconception of cultural competence as an attainable finite skill, but instead presents it as an ongoing process of self-awareness. The co-curricular activity offers an easy to implement model of education that could potentially fit the needs of pharmacy programs searching for ideas to teach cultural competency and social determinants of health, while circumventing the need to affect curricular structure.
 
 Article Type: Note

How cultural competence is conceptualised, developed and delivered in pharmacy education: a systematic review

“…When a definition was provided, it indicated cultural sensitivity entails the recognition of social determinants of health, adaptability to patients' cultural beliefs without stereotyping, and providing a healthcare plan that considers patients' own culture while being able to communicate effectively [28,47]. While it seems cultural sensitivity might be synonymous with CC, some studies indicated there is a difference and cultural sensitivity could be a part of becoming culturally competent [21,34,48]. We suggest that these studies demonstrate cultural sensitivity as an action or skill, which creates opportunity for students to 'show how' they can be culturally sensitive and are working towards being culturally competent.…”

“…This conceptualisation reflects a broader transformational behaviour change, which continually adapts through processes and perceptions. Diaz-Cruz [48] used the term 'cultural proficiency' and described this as an adaptation to differences in values and practices requiring personal transformation; the authors described that pharmacists can only strive for the goal of becoming culturally proficient, as this is a never-ending process of learning about and with cultures, where full competence cannot be achieved [48]. This conceptualisation positions CC as behaviours which are performed and practiced over time.…”

“…This has further implications for other educators who wish to design and implement CC interventions for their own programme. Specific terms to describe different conceptualisations of CC are needed to reflect the spectrum from a knowledge-based learning outcome where they know about different cultures, towards behavioural capability outcome, which enables them to adapt to different cultures in their practice [46,48,51].…”

A Systematic Review of Global Health Assessment for Education in Healthcare Professions

“…• Main et al [53] (reflective journals, content analysis) • CCCQ [51,65] • IAPCC [28,37,38,42,44,57,61,73] • MAQ [32] • SOPCS [94] Not validated: [22,25,36,46,50,51,62,66,79,89,[95][96][97] Grading: [47] Heffernan et al [43] (focus groups, thematic analysis) Validated:…”