It is important to educate students, let LGBT+ students feel included, tackle LGBT+ discrimination in education and healthcare settings, and most importantly, improve LGBT+ patient care.
LGBT+ patients have many unique health needs that are not currently met, alongside various other conditions and diseases which are impacting them but not represented adequately in the curriculum. This was confirmed by the 2017 National LGBT survey.
Scott Rutherford, President of the PDA LGBT+ Pharmacists’ Network, said: “People within the LGBT+ community experience a range of health inequalities, from higher rates of mental ill-health to difficulty accessing the care they need. Incorporating teaching about LGBT+ identities and inequalities into the initial education and training of pharmacists is overdue; although some pharmacy schools are doing great work in the arena of inclusion, all pharmacy schools should be ensuring that students are given the knowledge they need to be respectful to their patients and colleagues and provide culturally competent care.”
Updating curriculums at Schools of Pharmacy where LGBT+ inclusion is lacking, supports the GPhC’s Initial Education and Training standards (IET), specifically the aim of “having a greater emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion to combat discrimination and address health inequalities.”
Therefore, the committee wrote to both the GPhC and the Pharmacy Schools Council (PhSC), who are partly responsible for setting the MPharm curriculum (the letters can be found below).
A social media campaign was started to highlight the committee’s endeavours, using #LGBTplusMPharm. Further involvement of relevant stakeholders, such as students and individual pharmacy schools, will follow suit in the coming weeks.
The LGBT+ Education MPharm PDA Committee letter to the PhSC can be found below.
Download PHSC the Letter here
The LGBT+ Education MPharm PDA Committee letter to the GPhC can be found below.
Download the GPHC LETTER HERE
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact the committee at lgbt@the-pda.org.
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