Student experiences of cultural competence encounters during MPharm placements and foundation year training
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction Cultural competence is the ability of a healthcare professional to work effectively with clients from different backgrounds. With 18.3% of the UK population identifying with non-white1, pharmacists need to be culturally competent as they have a patient-facing role. Having a multicultural society would require culturally competent pharmacists to effectively deliver healthcare services to patients of different cultures. Exploring pharmacy students' experiences of CC encounters during their MPharm placements and foundation year training is crucial as it helps identify the challenges and barriers they may face when providing healthcare to diverse populations. Understanding these experiences can inform the development of effective training programs to enhance cultural competence among future pharmacists and highlight the impact of cultural factors on patient care and outcomes. Ultimately, this exploration contributes to the overall goal of improving healthcare delivery and promoting patient-centred, culturally sensitive pharmacy practice. Aim This study aimed to explore experiences of student regarding cultural competence encounters during placements and training. Methods A qualitative study was conducted between Oct – Dec 2023. All currently enrolled students in Parts 3, 4 and the foundation year were eligible to participate. Convenience sampling was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online using a pilot-tested script. Interviews were audio and video recorded and held online through a Microsoft Teams account, where an automatic electronic transcript was generated. Initial codes were generated from each transcript, to create themes and sub-themes. The researcher scrutinised the themes before defining and naming them. Ethical clearance was obtained. Results A total of 15 students (8 males and 7 females) participated in the study. Four participants were from year 3, five were from year 4, and six were from the foundation year. Six participants were from Asian backgrounds, four were Black, and three were White. All students had a placement in hospital, while 14 had a placement in community pharmacy in addition to hospital, and 8 had a placement in a GP surgery in addition to the hospital and community pharmacy. Key themes identified were 1) Impact of culture on patient health including language barriers and ethnic diversity, 2) Influence of personal culture on practice during placements and training such as using patient’s language to communicate, personal cultural awareness, and the influence of religious teachings, 3) Recommendations for improving cultural competence training in MPharm programme such as having more case studies. Conclusion This study provides a unique exploration into the experiences of pharmacy students and shows the importance of immersing in diverse cultural groups during placements and foundation training. There is a need to enhance pharmacy students’ training through curricular reforms that build on theoretical knowledge to instil confidence during placements and training. This approach will equip future pharmacists to navigate complex cultural dynamics, to meet the demands of an inclusive healthcare system. Ultimately this research extends beyond the current reforms to the MPharm curriculum, and advocates for an equitable and inclusive healthcare system to reduce health disparities. The predominance of participants from Asian backgrounds may limit the generalisability of the findings. Reference 1. Office for National Statistics. Measuring equality: A guide for the collection and classification of ethnic group, national identity and religion data in the UK. Office for National Statistics 2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/measuringequality/ethnicgroupnationalidentityandreligion. Accessed 20 Dec 2023.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".