Rachel Peña is a third-year PharmD candidate at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, Orlando Campus.
As a future health care provider, I find it important to be able to connect with and advocate for patients so they feel empowered to make decisions on their health outcomes. I’ve had the privilege of working with various patient populations, such as in interprofessional clinics for underserved patients and summer camps for children with chronic illnesses enjoying a few days away from home with other children in similar situations. Being involved in helping patients actively participate in their health outcomes has been immensely rewarding as a student pharmacist.
However, it was the encounters with Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHOH) d/Deaf patients in the community pharmacy setting that motivated me to take my commitment to patient advocacy to new heights.
Take their communication style into consideration
Far too often, d/Deaf people face gaps in communication with the people around them. I have witnessed it firsthand when working as a technician and intern in my local community pharmacy. With my limited vocabulary in American Sign Language (ASL), I would try to communicate with d/Deaf patients who were coming into the pharmacy to pick up their prescriptions as best as I could. While some preferred to simply write on paper, many appreciated my efforts in trying to include them in the conversation instead of making them feel like a burden. So, as the current president of our campus pediatric pharmacy organization, I decided to coordinate a webinar titled Deaf Culture and Healthcare, in which student pharmacists, faculty, staff, postdoctoral students, and guests of the University of Florida (UF) College of Pharmacy could come together to learn how to bridge gaps in communication in health care from someone who is part of the Deaf community themselves. We cohosted this event with the UF College of Pharmacy’s Office of Accessibility, Belonging, and Community Health.
The webinar was held on September 20, 2023, during Deaf Awareness Month. Our guest speaker, Zulma “Yary” Santiago, MA, is a UF ASL professor who has unfortunately faced many instances in which she has been turned away from health checkups simply because of a communication barrier. In the webinar, Professor Santiago provided the audience with a bit of background on Deaf culture—including the fact that Deaf people see themselves as part of the Deaf community, while deaf people do not have as strong of a connection or associate themselves with the Deaf community. She also spoke about training and certification for ASL interpreters, challenges that may come with video remote interpretation in clinics, and resources we can use to learn ASL ourselves. Professor Santiago also emphasized that we do not need to know ASL to include these patients in conversations about their health outcomes, but we should still put in the effort of taking their communication style into consideration.
With 70 participants, including a Deaf PharmD student, I know many including myself learned a lot of new things about how to best interact with this patient population and appreciate the fact that we were able to learn all this from a Deaf person directly.
Empowering the patient
The webinar provided insight for current and future health care providers on how to advocate for this underrepresented patient population. I was grateful to be able to give a member of the Deaf community a chance to speak about their personal experiences and how they have actually been affected by their experiences, both negatively and positively. When we strive to become more aware of how to navigate these communication gaps, it creates a better experience for the patient to achieve their health outcomes and ultimately walk away feeling empowered to make decisions with their health care team.