On the morning of 22nd March 2014, participants made a beeline into the lecture theater in University of East Anglia (UEA) for the conference focusing on "Pain"! Our colleagues from Nottingham journeyed from UP campus at 6.30am to UEA with a bus sponsored by the School of Pharmacy!
Delegates registering for the Eastern Area Conference on the topic of pain
at the University of East Anglia.
Sean going through the registration lists and certificates as part of the BPSA reps' job
to make sure everything goes as planned.
The conference kicked off with a talk by Jonathan Davies, a pharmacist who talked about morphine and analgesics through the ages.
Acacia, our year 3 colleague who is also the Eastern Area Coordinator, led the conference as the emcee. There are also some wonderful PharmPress prizes up for grabs if you ask questions during the Eastern Area Conference.
Jonathan explaining about BIMU-8, a 5-HT4
receptor selective agonist, which is used to oppose the respiratory depression side effects of opioid analgesics given concomitantly.
The third speaker, Marcia Schofield, talked about using cannabinoids in cancer pain. Her talk mainly focused on a cannabis mouthspray - Savitex, which is indicated mainly for managing palliative pain. She expressed the need to introduce cannabis-containing analgesics to improve control of palliative pain, but yet it is always hard to convince policy makers that the benefits outweigh the risk of drug abuse and diversions.
The 4th speaker was David Wright, a lecturer from UEA who talked about an exploratory clinical trial (a smaller trial before going for a full RCT), which focused on pharmacist-led management of chronic pain. This trial has demonstrated that even with a small sample size, there is a significant improvement when pharmacists review patients' medications with face-to-face pharmacist prescribing. Read all about it at http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/4/e002361.full
This is something spectacular as, if succeeded, pharmacists in the future will have the chance to be involved in prescribing and managing pain associated with chronic diseases, similar to nurses specializing in care of diabetic patients.
We also had a keepad session to keep us awake!
Lastly, there was a bonus session on "Surviving Pharmacy", which talked about tips on securing placements and scoring in interviews. In this photo, Lily Chong, one of the current pre-reg pharmacist, talked about the importance of showing employers in your application how you can cope with the pre-reg training. If you want to mention learning about teamwork from some activity, you must relate it to your job (i.e. working with dispensers, ACTs and other HCPs) to be able to impress them.
She also emphasized getting work experience, or getting serious with your hobbies. This shows that you are out there improving yourself, whether related to pharmacy or non-pharmacy. It doesn't matter whether you have a 1-month placement or even a 1-day placement. As long as you utilize the STAR (situation, task, action, result) approach to answer questions, employers will have a better understanding of your experiences.
Besides that, she also emphasized that the Professional Development Scheme (PDS) point system by BPSA is a good way to prove to employers that you are able to complete CPDs and continue your development in the future. It doesn't really matter whether you have only a bronze or silver star PDS cert. To get yourself registered for the PDS system, log on to http://www.bpsa.co.uk/index.php/professional-development and sign up at the link provided.
Certificate of Attendance is awarded as a result of participation in this event which is approved by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) as providing a relevant contribution to your professional development.
To sum it up, although BPSA conferences have the same set-up similar to usual lectures, the contents are very new and engaging, which gives you the edge in terms of pharmaceutical developments. How else could you impress your employer if not by being ahead of the game?
