Pharmacy Students’ Experience of an Inaugural Lecture on Intercultural Competence †
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Methods
2.1. Design, Venue, and Eligibility Criteria
2.2. Research Instruments
2.3. Sampling Data Collection Process
2.4. Description of the Lecture
2.5. Data Analysis
2.6. Ethical Clearance
3. Results
3.1. Theme 1: Awareness of and Reflection on Cultural Competence
3.1.1. Prior Understanding
I can say generally, like to know people coming from different cultures and our behaviour or towards them should be little bit aligned with what they believe.(P2)
I am from a different country like I’m not originally from the UK, I feel like I had very general grasp on the concept because I would understand that people might not know my culture, so I would like be understandable, if they don’t, but I will feel really appreciated if they do.(P7)
I didn’t have that much understanding about it. I just knew that I thought it is just like respecting to other people cultures and how you deal with different ideas, different point, and uh opinions of people that was as my idea for going to the lecture.(P6)
I had basic experience with it for my own professional life. But I didn’t have deeper understanding.(P10)
3.1.2. Post-Lecture Reflection
The topic for me meant being aware of my own cultural beliefs and values, and how that differed from people in different communities. It included being able to participate and honour a variety of different cultures. I think the lecture did a great job at educating me on the biases and the stereotypes we can feed into and how that affects the care that we give to patients, and this was something I was unaware of.(P3)
I had a bit more understanding of how to approach different situations post-lecture.(P4)
I think this lecture brought something better and more valuable for me as a future healthcare professional.(P9)
I found the lecture being very covering through the whole concept.(P7)
Like different people have different beliefs, culture, backgrounds and as of probably as a pharmacist, you try not to judge that person based on what they think. You just try to understand and try to help them. Even though they have different background, try to help them. Regarding the background and show that they’re not different, they’re just like everyone, and they will get the help they needed no matter what their background is.(P6)
I got a greater number of examples of where it can be used in practice, like how to look out for it and be more aware.(P8)
3.1.3. Experience of Lecture
The topic is very wide and very important, I think they should make more content on that and then on different lectures, because I would say 1 lecture isn’t enough to cover all of it.(P9)
It had enough details to teach us what it is, what intercultural competency is. But it didn’t go beyond any further teaching, so more detail could be better.(P10)
I suppose it could go into more specific details.(P11)
The topic of emotional intelligence. how to improve your emotional intelligence when you’re dealing with patients from different backgrounds and making sure you’re being professional and being culturally competent.(P10)
I don’t know if this counts like but for mute and blind people like that they cannot communicate. I don’t think it counts in cultural competence, but I feel like because he talked about people who have difficulty in communicating, I feel like general education about mute and blind people will be something to add.(P7)
The way to understand other people’s culture and relate that to like your own experience So not everybody might share the same like cultural background, but it’s important to know about others.(P1)
I believe that it changes my understanding by firstly making me more conscious about the important of different culture that I might encounter.(P11)
I think I definitely thought more about cultural competence than I have before. So that was good. I think it’s an important conversation.(P4)
3.2. Theme 2: Understanding Cultural Competence and Its Importance
3.2.1. Defining Cultural Competence
Cultural competence to me, it means recognising that other people are different to yourself, and they have different backgrounds, different identities, and being able to, uh, provide care for them regardless of their background in an equal manner.(P10)
You are able to understand the different cultures and respect different cultures. That you have the enough knowledge and confidence to act and provide services, talk to people from different cultures without doing any harms as specialized healthcare professional.(P11)
There are some people with different backgrounds and then you have to respect uh and then deal with their backgrounds and their beliefs and respect their opinions.(P9)
Intercultural competence, just from the name sounds to me how well you can, uh, cooperate and communicate with different people from different cultures. It within your workplace or within educational institutions.(P11)
I think it’s just to implement that different people have different opinions based off of their cultures and you should be able to, you know, work with people with these different backgrounds despite your different opinions.(P11)
3.2.2. Personal Importance of Cultural Competence
So just like being able to understand how other people’s culture like affects your interactions with them and like how important, like how embedded culture is.(P1)
I think it’s important to have the ability to understand and interact effectively with people from different cultures. It allows us to have self-awareness, have empathy towards one another, and the chance to create long lasting relationship.(P3)
It is important to be aware of other people’s ethnic, backgrounds, like not cause offence to them and like accidentally insulting them or something. But I think it’s important for both Pharmacy and in just in life in general.(P8)
I would say just make sure you know the language. Make sure you’re empathetic and understanding, no matter what, and don’t try and undermine someone’s health condition just because maybe their English is not so good because you might be like missing it important red flag symptoms.(P10)
Probably maybe like how to deal with it. Like If you face any problems in the future look like in a cultural difference or requires a cultural competence, and like how to actually handle it or deal with it as like in a professional way, as a pharmacist, how would we deal with it in the future. if you actually face that in and that in a work setting.(P6)
Maybe just be like a little bit more cautious about what you say in front of patients. Just be like cautious what you say to different patients. different patients may react differently to information that you give them.(P8)
If you lack intercultural competence, so if you [are] lacking intercultural competence, you could damage a patient’s health and for that reason it’s more important in pharmacy practice.(P10)
When it comes to pharmacy practice, it’s just having a cultural competence is important because it helps you to achieve that patient centred care much better and better quality.(P11)
3.2.3. Gaps in and Impact of Cultural Competence in Healthcare
I don’t see many people kind of eager to find out about other people’s culture in a sense.(P1)
Most of the people here at least, or at least I can say the people that I’ve been in contact with, or people that I’ve seen. They are not familiar with all the cultures apart from just some common cultures that you can see in the UK.(P2)
Some other healthcare professionals such as pharmacy dispenses and are rarely aware of the importance of intercultural competence. As I have witnessed in some situation where pharmacy dispenser gets confused, if patient behaved differently and because of a religion or their culture beliefs and they were expecting him or her to behave as normal, but that wasn’t the case and then they were confused.(P9)
I think that every pharmacist has to have a good knowledge of different religions and cultures. Because I think it makes the patient more able to communicate and then more open to speak up about their diseases or illnesses with health professional for better treatment.(P9)
I think that would kind of like affect a future pharmacist and practice if they’re not eager to find out where their patients are coming from and trying like give a better, like better healthcare towards them because like surrounding their culture, I think that that’s why it’s quite important.(P1)
I think that pharmacist and healthcare professionals in general should familiarise themselves with diverse cultural backgrounds because it will affect the care that they give. This includes different beliefs, different values and healthcare practices, and how this will affect their response to medication and treatment.(P3)
Being interculturally competent improves patient outcomes because it allows you to communicate better and be more empathetic, which has an impact on the patient’s quality of care.(P10)
We need to have the knowledge, uh of different background of the patient because it helps in offering a patient centred care.(P9)
I think if they try to reach that communication to be able to communicate the feelings or the cultural background, then the pharmacist might get a better understanding of what’s going on.(P11)
But this is something I would want to just like try and like step out of your comfort zone.(P1)
I think one of the gaps is being able to receive training for putting aside your different political beliefs. Maybe I might have a different political belief to you, but we still have to be able to provide that same care and we haven’t really been given that training before.(P10)
3.3. Theme 3: Student-Preferred Pedagogy
3.3.1. Preferred Learning Methods
In the workshops you could have mock role plays, so you could like someone can be acting as a patient, someone acting as a pharmacist.(P10)
I think I would benefit from workshops that would allow me to build on skills such as like analysing and being able to interpret verbal and nonverbal cues with patients who may not speak English.(P3)
The content if delivered as a lecture won’t be as effective as if it was as a workshop because students could be more interactive with the content, and it could be like scenario based.(P4)
Maybe talk in practice like doing in practical like simulations instead of lecture.(P7)
So, like in placements, it is a good way to actually get direct experience with other patients from different cultures.(P10)
3.3.2. Preferred Assessment Methods
I think intercultural competence is something you have to have in general as a professional, so it’s maybe like part of professional practice. like scenario-based decision making.(P4)
I think it says that placement activity assessment was an example. I think that would be a great way because maybe we can like role play different scenarios with patients of different backgrounds. It allows us to be practical and put ourselves in their shoes.(P3)
I think it would fit more in the scenario-based questions.(P4)
Culture competence can be assessed as a group study. Group case study like presenting a problem or try to solve the problems.(P6)
Maybe an MCQ such as what would you do in this case? Uh, like more of an ethical problem, I guess it would be, right? Or maybe like short answer question, or you can even make maybe a long answer question. You know, like a situation with a patient like that maybe. So, it’s like making a scenario and see how they will react to it.(P5)
I feel like if it’s more of a simulation thing, like in our OSCE, you can do like ohh, I’m a person of colour or an Asian person and I have different beliefs from you. What do you do then? So that will put you in a difficult position to actually deal with the problems. I feel like it’s a thing for OSCE mostly like put it in the OSCE; don’t think it fits in exam questions.(P7)
I think OSCE might be good for the assessment.(P1)
I think we have OSCE’s ahead of us and we have some practical as well that we talk to the patients. I think the best assessment could be dealing as practice… And the teachers can monitor as if we consider the patient’s culture.(P2)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Variables | N | (%) |
---|---|---|
Age | ||
18–20 | 4 | 36.4 |
21–23 | 4 | 36.4 |
24 and above | 3 | 27.3 |
Gender | ||
Male | 4 | 36.4 |
Female | 7 | 63.6 |
Ethnicity * | ||
Asian | 2 | 18.2 |
Black | 3 | 27.3 |
Mixed | 1 | 9.1 |
White | 1 | 9.1 |
Any other ethnic groups | 4 | 36.4 |
Year of study | ||
Year 2 | 4 | 36.4 |
Year 3 | 7 | 63.6 |
Lecture engagement | ||
Attended in person | 10 | 90.9 |
Watched recording | 1 | 9.1 |
Student status | ||
International | 6 | 54.5 |
Home | 5 | 45.5 |
Lived outside the UK for 6 months or more | ||
Yes | 4 | 36.4 |
No | 7 | 63.6 |
Worked outside the UK | ||
Yes | 2 | 18.2 |
No | 9 | 81.8 |
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Share and Cite
Naqvi, A.A.; Samsom, M.; Watson, L.; Nguyen, H. Pharmacy Students’ Experience of an Inaugural Lecture on Intercultural Competence. Pharmacy 2025, 13, 122. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy13050122
Naqvi AA, Samsom M, Watson L, Nguyen H. Pharmacy Students’ Experience of an Inaugural Lecture on Intercultural Competence. Pharmacy. 2025; 13(5):122. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy13050122
Chicago/Turabian StyleNaqvi, Atta Abbas, Merhawi Samsom, Lucy Watson, and Hung Nguyen. 2025. "Pharmacy Students’ Experience of an Inaugural Lecture on Intercultural Competence" Pharmacy 13, no. 5: 122. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy13050122
APA StyleNaqvi, A. A., Samsom, M., Watson, L., & Nguyen, H. (2025). Pharmacy Students’ Experience of an Inaugural Lecture on Intercultural Competence. Pharmacy, 13(5), 122. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy13050122