(309) Identification of Barriers to Care for Medically Underserved Patients Following an Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience

Objective :

Objective: Pharmacist understanding of barriers to care is critical to providing the best care and advocating for medically underserved patients. This project aimed to determine first-year (P1) student identification of barriers to care among medically underserved populations during their introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE).

Methods:

Methods: The University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Pharmacy has threaded diversity,
equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the experiential curriculum to ensure the students are prepared to care for medically underserved populations upon graduation. After a 40-hour community pharmacy IPPE, P1 students completed reflections that included describing an experience related to medically underserved populations that had an impact on them. Content analysis was conducted by three investigators using Dedoose to identify themes related to barriers to care among underserved populations described in the P1 reflections. A minimum of 10% of reflections were coded in duplicate to ensure inter-rater consistency.

Results:

Results: There were 192 student reflections included. Student-identified themes related to barriers to care experienced by medically underserved populations included low socioeconomic status, discrimination, disabilities, low health literacy, non-English speaking, and rurality.

Conclusions:

Conclusion: This analysis of P1 students’ IPPE reflections demonstrates student understanding and awareness of the barriers to care that medically underserved populations experience. This assignment can be broadly applied to a variety of pharmacy programs to assess student identification of barriers to care for medically underserved populations.