(336) A Prescription to Change Enhancing Pharmacy Student’s Cultural Intelligence

Objective : The aim was to explore student experiences with cultural interactions in the pharmacy practice setting and
classroom with the goal of identifying meaningful opportunities for students to develop their cultural
intelligence.

Methods: From February 2023 to October 2023, four focus groups were conducted with 12 student participants
from a Midwest health professions university. Deductive coding using the Cultural Intelligent Framework
(CIF) as a codebook was applied to the data set to explore students’ culture intelligence experiences.

CIF encompasses 4 domains: Awareness, self-examination of one’s own cultural background; Desire,
motivation to be culturally intelligent; Knowledge, seeking and obtaining knowledge about culturally
diverse groups; Practice, interacting with culturally diverse backgrounds while in practice settings.

Results: Preliminary results, exploring code frequency, suggest that student experiences provide them with
opportunities to express their desire (32%), awareness (31%) and practice (27%) but less opportunities to
engage their knowledge (9%) regarding cultural intelligence. One participant shared, “I have probably a
very baseline knowledge of being diverse...So just being aware and being completely honest and [having]
humility that I don’t know [everything], but I am willing to learn.” The student recognizes their limited
knowledge but also demonstrates their awareness and desire to be culturally intelligent.

Conclusions: This study evaluated student experiences and determined areas of growth that should be included in the
development of future pharmacists. It is of utmost importance that students are equipped with cultural
intelligence to be effective providers; who are at the forefront of patient care. Pharmacy schools should
provide students with opportunities for growth and developing their cultural intelligence, not providing
these experiences is a disservice to students’ future communities.