Fostering cultural sensitivity amongst students of pharmacy through an interprofessional book club activity

To describe a large-scale, cultural sensitivity-focused interprofessional book club activity that is required in the first-professional year of an accelerated pharmacy curriculum.

An interprofessional book club activity, focusing on the need for cultural sensitivity in health care, is conducted annually for students in the acupuncture, pharmacy, physical therapy, physician assistant, and sonography programs. Each year over 400 students are required to attend and are assigned to interprofessional groups to discuss guided questions pertaining to the book written by Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Pharmacy students complete multiple assignments before and after the activity. Students are administered a post-survey to collect student feedback and self-assessment data. The book club has been run in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.

Student survey responses have consistently revealed that the majority of students agreed or strongly agreed that they were better prepared for culturally-diverse patient interactions, the activity allowed for interprofessional learning, and the activity should continue for future students.

A book club activity is an effective strategy for delivering content related to cultural sensitivity in an interprofessional format. This activity model can be used to support interactions with multiple professions in different schools within the same university or with multiple professions located at different universities/institutions.