Educating Ourselves, Identifying Biases as a Health Care Professional

Jacinda C. Abdul-Mutakabbir aka “JAM”, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVP, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice, Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy, spoke with Pharmacy Times about her session at McKesson ideaShare 2022 titled "Cultural Competence in Pharmacy Practice".

JAM: I think that, um, first and foremost of education, being able to educate ourselves about different biases that we may have, whether they be implicit or explicit. And then really being willing to hold ourselves accountable as well as other team members. I think accountability is a really big trade, because it's one thing to have these biases and to be able to identify them. But at the end of the day, we're all human, we make missteps. So being able to acknowledge those missteps that may have been made that may have prevented you from delivering as culturally competent care, and being able to recalibrate and to take the correction. Well, so I think accountability is definitely one, and then just having a mindset that makes health equity your priority, so prioritizing that health equity- I think there's something that's needed for cultural competency. Like I said, it's one thing to know what cultural competency is to be able to regurgitate the definition, but it's another thing to really have this priority to make health equity a verb, and when you have that priority, then you're more apt to be culturally competent, because you want to make sure that everybody receives great health care.