Building Trust, Equity, and Care in Pharmacy Education—Workshop Recap: It Doesn’t Have to Be a Hard Pill to Swallow

Workshop Overview 

On August 26, 2025, the PrideRx team welcomed UBC faculty, staff, and experiential partners to the second session of our two-part workshop series, It Doesn’t Have to Be a Hard Pill to Swallow. This event built on our shared goal of advancing sexual and gender equity in pharmacy education by integrating concepts of sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) into teaching and practice. 

Our guest speakers — Dr. Vaibhav (Vee) Saria, Dr. Lesley Thomas, Mandy Young, and a panel of patient partners — guided participants through a day of reflection and dialogue on how educators and healthcare professionals can foster inclusion and equity across learning environments. 

Reimagining Trust and Care 

Dr. Vaibhav (Vee) Saria (Simon Fraser University) opened the morning by examining how healthcare systems simultaneously reproduce and challenge inequities related to race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing from the humanities discipline and lived experience, Dr. Saria explored the “know-do gap”, which refers to the distance between knowing what equitable care entails and putting that knowledge into practice and action. 

Through discussions on trust and vulnerability, participants learned how to create safer encounters with trans and gender-diverse patients and build new norms in gender-affirming care.  

Rest as a Radical Practice 

In the late morning session, Dr. Lesley Thomas (UBC Faculty of Medicine) invited participants to explore rest as an essential practice for wellbeing and as a tool to disrupt systems of oppression. Framing rest as both a decolonial practice and a radical act of care, Dr. Thomas reminded us that our worth does not reside in what we produce. 

Through embodied rest exercises, including a brief “eye yoga” session and mindful reflection, participants experienced and explored different types of rest. 

The session wove together guided practices and reflection to consider how rest can be intentionally integrated into classroom-based learning and reimagining clinical teaching as an opportunity to model self-care. 

Centring Patient Voices 

The final afternoon session, led by Mandy Young (UBC Health) and a panel of patient partners, focused on narrative and lived experience as central to learning. Mandy and Panelists shared personal stories that illustrate how social determinants of health, such as gender identity, access and quality of medical care, shape each person’s healthcare experiences and health outcomes.  

Through guided conversations, participants deepened their understanding of how diverse lived experiences inform expectations for a more inclusive healthcare system. Participants learned to apply Universal Design for Learning principles to the classroom to center patient voices, reinforcing the value of co-creating learning spaces alongside communities. 

Continuing the Conversation 

This workshop reaffirmed that advancing equity in pharmacy education requires critical reflection and collaboration. Participants left with new tools to integrate SOGIE concepts and patient perspectives into their teaching and supervision. 

PrideRx extends our gratitude to all speakers, patient partners, and attendees who made this workshop an engaging and meaningful exchange. 

To learn more about our ongoing initiatives and the team behind PrideRx, visit the Practice and About page.