Pharmacy Daily | APC urges boost in cultural capability

AUSTRALIAN pharmacy education programs could be enhanced with more "cultural capability" as a key way of reducing health disparities and improving the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, according to a new report from the Australian Pharmacy Council (APC).

The accreditation agency has conducted a literature review to compile recommendations, collated in the report titled Approaches to implementation of cultural safety in the training of education of health professionals.

As well as Australia, the report looks at practices in Canada, New Zealand and the USA, "with the objective of identifying approaches to enhancing the cultural capability education of Australian pharmacy students so that on graduation they are both committed to improvement of the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples, and capable of practising in ways that are culturally safe, sensitive and responsive".

Substantial differences in the health of Indigenous peoples are described in the research literature, encompassing higher rates of disease, co-morbidities, hospitalisation and mortality.

"Given the robust evidence that Indigenous peoples have demonstrated very long histories of good health and resilience prior to Western settlement, the current situation can be primarily attributed to historical, political, cultural and social determinants which have impacted negatively on the ability of Indigenous peoples to practise their culture," the report's executive summary notes.

Moreover "Indigenous ways of knowing and being have often been devalued and disregarded as inferior to Western approaches, which has engendered understandable distrust and reluctance to engage."

Creating culturally safe spaces for health care provision is seen as central to efforts to improve the health of Indigenous individuals and communities, with the report making a range of key recommendations including ensuring students are "sensitised to their responsibilities as both advocates and agents of change".

Learning should be seen as a means of promoting individual and collective transformation, while curricula and learning environments should be "decolonised and Indigenised".

The APC is considering adapting the Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools (CDAMS) Indigenous Health Curriculum Framework for the education of pharmacists, with the review one of the phases leading to possible implementation - apc.edu.au.