An evaluation of cultural safety education in a pharmacy curriculum through constructive alignment mapping

Cultural safety is a vital component of healthcare education, particularly in countries with colonial histories such as Australia. Ensuring that cultural safety is meaningfully embedded and assessed within health professional programs is essential for improving health outcomes for First Nation Australians. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate how cultural safety is represented in a Pharmacy education curriculum.

A qualitative curriculum mapping approach was used to identify cultural safety elements in curriculum documents. First, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health curriculum framework was used to determine if unit-level learning outcomes referenced cultural safety. Second, the concept of constructive alignment was used to determine if cultural safety learning outcomes were constructively aligned with learning activities and assessments. Third, verbs similar to Bloom's taxonomy was used to identify the cognitive level of cultural safety elements RESULTS: Seven units of study were mapped. One unit demonstrated aligned cultural safety elements, however, six did not. Assessments of cultural safety learning outcomes were largely absent with learning activities typically confined to single events at novice level. When assessments did occur, they were predominantly of a lower cognitive order through multiple choice or short answer questions formats CONCLUSION: Despite national standards, cultural safety appears to be inconsistently embedded and poorly assessed. Further curriculum development is necessary to achieve constructive alignment and accountability.