Improving cultural humility in pharmacy education: A focus on diabetes management during religious fasting

Background

Cultural humility is an increasingly important focus of healthcare education, aiming to equip students with the tools they need to provide care to diverse groups of people. There is a growing need for healthcare providers to understand Islamic religious practices that influence heath decision-making, especially religious fasting during Ramadan. However, there are limited efforts in pharmacy curriculums to address this. The objective of this project is to describe a cultural humility activity focusing on increasing students' confidence in managing patients' diabetes medications during religious fasting.

Methods

A case-based activity was delivered within a pharmaceutical skills lab. Pre- and post-activity surveys assessed self-efficacy in student's confidence in communication, creating therapeutic plans, and identifying challenges and opportunities in the context of Ramadan fasting. Confidence was rated on a five-point Likert scale. Paired t-tests were used to compare mean confidence scores before and after the activity.

Results

A total of 56 of 63 students completed the survey. The results showed improvements in confidence across all areas: initiating conversations about medication management (mean change +1.11 [0.20]; t = 5.475; P < .0001), developing therapeutic plans (mean change +1.29 [0.19]; t = 6.822; P < .0001), identifying challenges (mean change +1.02 [0.20]; t = 5.136; P < .0001), and recognizing opportunities (mean change +1.07 [0.20]; t = 5.318; P < .0001).

Conclusion

This study demonstrated a successful activity designed to increase cultural humility in future pharmacists for the purpose of delivering high quality healthcare to diverse patient groups. To address disparities in pharmacists' ability to deliver culturally mindful care to Muslim populations, additional activities should be designed incorporating this topic into curricula.