(68) Humanizing Healthcare: Student Reflections on Person-Centered Naloxone Education with Social Determinants of Health Integration

Objective : To analyze students’ perceptions of applying person-centered communication skills and integrating social determinants of health (SDOH) when providing naloxone education to standardized patients.

Methods: All third-year students completed a 20-minute communication assessment with a standardized patient in the Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) Readiness course. Students provided naloxone education to a patient experiencing housing insecurity. Following the assessment, students reflected on two questions: “What challenges or surprises did you experience in educating someone experiencing house insecurity?” and “What were your takeaways in keeping language around substance misuse and naloxone non-judgmental?” Using inductive thematic analysis, investigators qualitatively analyzed de-identified student reflections and used an iterative approach to open and axial coding to identify themes.

Results: Ninety-six students completed the reflection. The top challenge identified by seventy students (72.9%) was problem solving or collaboratively developing solutions for the patients' social situation. Other common themes included a challenged perspective of naloxone use or housing insecurity (32.3%), feeling limited in their ability to support patients with social challenges (14.6%), and a lack of experience communicating with someone experiencing housing insecurity (46.9%). Students identified several communication strategies as key takeaways, providing solutions for some expressed challenges. The themes identified included provider internal approaches like being open-minded and questioning assumptions, and provider external approaches like staying blame free and normalizing experiences.

Conclusions: Students valued educating a patient with housing insecurity on naloxone. Responses indicate that students felt limited in educating patients with social challenges and unsure if considering or addressing these challenges were within the pharmacists’ scope of practice. These findings reinforce the need for schools to incorporate additional opportunities within the curriculum for students to integrate social determinants of health into patient interactions.