How UBC integrated Indigenous health and cultural safety education into its PharmD program

When Larry Leung was a pharmacy resident, he found himself working in an interprofessional healthcare team on a First Nations reserve. His colleague Jason Min had just finished his residency and was also working on a reserve. Neither of the now-University of British Columbia (UBC) professors are Indigenous, and they both found themselves feeling completely unprepared and uneducated. “This was before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and this wasn’t a topic you really learned about in school,” Min says. “If it weren’t for some really patient elders and community members that taught us, we wouldn’t have been able to do our work.” The experience inspired Min and Leung to start UPROOT, a project which works to decolonize and Indigenize pharmacy and pharmacy education at UBC. “We chose the term 'uproot' because we wanted to acknowledge that the first thing you need to do work in this space is to examine what stereotypes and feelings and biases you hold related to Indigenous health and cultural safety—and then uproot those,” Min explains. The goal is to honour traditional Indigenous medicine.Since getting started over a decade ago, the two have created what Min calls curricular pillars around Indigenous health and cultural safety. “Pharmacy is a competency-based education, and we’re really focussing on what competencies don’t exist in the pharmacy world,” he says. The curriculum includes touch points throughout students’ time at UBC which build to create competency around Indigenous health. It begins in the mandatory first-year PharmD class, which include four hours focusing on the importance of learning about Indigenous issues. Since PharmD students are likely coming into the program with some knowledge of Canada’s colonial history and atrocities committed against Indigenous people, this educational pillar tackles the reasoning for including this topic within a pharmacy education. There is also a three-hour workshop and some other online workshops that are interprofessional, so students can learn alongside the other health programs on campus. Then, in second year, there’s a mandatory course focussing on Indigenous health and cultural safety—the first in the country, Min says.After that, there’s an elective course in third year that tasks students with completing a community-based project with one of UBC’s partners. “One of the key elements is reciprocity, and you can’t teach reciprocity in a classroom,” Min says. In this course, students are matched based on their skills and interests and then use the term to complete a group project that one of their partners want. The projects aren’t always pharmacy specific (though many of them are). A group once created a healthy eating book in collaboration with a local farm and store, for example. “The emphasis isn’t on pharmacy-specific content: it’s how you can be a well-rounded citizen and pharmacist-to-be,” he says. “How can you be a good ally in reciprocity? And it doesn’t have to be within the confines of your dispensary.” Finally, new for this year, is a land-based and place-based elective. The course, which is about halfway through right now, gives students hands-on experience with Indigenous partners where they can touch, feel, eat and prepare traditional medicines and attend cultural activities and events. They spend time at an Indigenous-run medical clinic and the new pharmacy that’s opened up there which hosts a traditional medicines program. They also work with a knowledge keeper and learn about their work, as well as attend workshops where they get exposed to Indigenous ways of healing and health. Min says that these types of learning opportunities are important for future pharmacists because of the systemic racism that still exists in medical environments—both overt and hidden. For Min, teaching the next generation of pharmacists should also include teaching them how to be anti-racist, to help them avoid perpetuating the injustices that remain all too common. He hopes that students will feel called to be part of the conversation, not called out, and that they’re prepared to confront their own biases. As the only pharmacy school in the province, UBC has a unique opportunity to train students on these issues, Min explains. And while BC now mandates that pharmacists complete Indigenous health and cultural humility education, it’s still important for students to understand these systemic issues long before they receive their licenses. “Regardless of what practice, setting or identities you hold, this is important.”

How UBC integrated Indigenous health and cultural safety education into its PharmD program

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics

Business Topic