Annual Conference - Final Day!

As with tradition, the conference ends with the election day to elect new committees for the new year! The day is fully packed with candidates and their proposers giving speeches on why they should be elected for their nominated role.

Laura, the returning officer, lead the elections such that it is fair and unbiased. There are many options you can call to vote for the particular executive role, such as simple vote, secret vote, simple delegate vote and secret delegate vote. Therefore, to be elected as a BPSA executive, candidates will have to really impress the delegation before they can take up those heavy responsibilities!

And of course, with a new beginning, there must be a wonderful ending, which is the BPSA Annual Ball! This year it was held at the Mercure Leicester Grand Hotel, one of the oldest (and most grand) hotels in Leicester!

Not to mention the food at the ball was also the best throughout the week!

Our group photo together with our two lovely juniors, Lynn (2nd from left) and Joanne (3rd from left) from Nottingham Malaysia Campus! Every year, the winners of the McNeil Responding to Symptoms Competition in the Malaysia Campus is sponsored to attend the BPSA Annual conference, which should be continued as the benefits are many folds!

There's just too much to be said in this blog about the annual conference. I would be more than happy to describe to you about the annual conference experience and all about BPSA. There's just so much to learn and develop oneself in the pharmacy career, and the annual conference is just a one of many stepping stones into the broadness of the profession!

And just to let you know, the next annual conference will be held at LIVERPOOL! Our host will be the Liverpool John Moores University, so make it your new year resolution for year 2015 to attend the BPSA 73rd Annual Conference!!

Annual Conference - Day 4 and 5

DAY 4 - BPSA DAY

The BPSA day is the main highlight of the week (apart from socials). Every year, there is the famous Medical Exhibition (MedEx) in which many pharmacy professional bodies set up booths as information centres and also to give away freebies! As BPSA members, you may choose to come for just today if you can't commit for the whole week. The final presentation of posters for the Research Poster Award competition and also other competition finals like the McNeil Responding to Symptoms Competition Final is held on this day too! 

A hearty breakfast from DMU cafeteria to start the big day! 

For this year, there were talks by charity organisations such as LOROS (Leicester Hospice Charity), which gave us a deeper understanding into the work of hospice pharmacists and healthcare professionals. We were also adviced to help out at our local hospice centres, wherever we may be as hospice centres are run by a voluntary workforce, so do help out!

We were also given a talk about Regulatory Affairs and being a regulatory affairs pharmacist. There's just so many things we pharmacists can be involved in, such as regulating clinical trial applications, marketing authorization (MA) applications, gathering data for regulatory intelligence and not forgetting the role of pharmacists in health agencies, such as MHRA. Certainly, the field of regulatory affairs is well underrated among students.

More talks?! Well where else would you have the chance to get a first-hand knowledge on the new and upcoming trends in pharmacy? This talk was about HEALTHY LIVING PHARMACIES (HLP). Although you may ask, which pharmacies do not promote healthy living? The concept of HLP is far more broader than just a brand. It's the way forward for pharmacy as discussed earlier, the role of pharmacists should shift towards a more clinical role, to be more PROACTIVE to promote healthcare rather than REACTIVE (responding to presenting complaints).

Another thing emphasized in the concept of HLP is the role of LEADERSHIP as pharmacists. Whether you like it or not, you guys will become LEADERS of your healthcare team, not only in community pharmacies alone. HLP focuses on getting pharmacists to empower the other staffs in the pharmacy, leading them to go above and beyond their expected roles and promote healthy living. Get your staffs appropriate training and development such that they can bring out their full potential and also freeing up time for pharmacists to deal with the clinical side of the patient experience.

Seen a familiar face? Yeap, that's the honorary professor Joy Wingfield who lead the LPF session for Nottingham last month! She and Sapana Mody (on the right) gave a good educational talk on the prospects of doing a postgraduate law qualification and how it can help you advance in the pharmacy world. 

Basically, a postgraduate law diploma is a huge plus if you are considering to work as directors, superintendents or senior managers in pharmaceutical companies. Or, you can work for regulators such as GPhC or MHRA with your law qualification. Or, you can even specialize in academia, teaching and training, such as Professor Wingfield herself as she edited the Dale and Appelbe's Law and Ethics Textbook, and also supervise many postgrad students in their research regarding law and ethics of the healthcare world. There's just so much that you can do with your MPharm degree!

Commercial and Academic Services (CoAcS) is the host for our BPSA Professional Development Scheme (find out more about PDS on the BPSA website). If you are interested, surf this website (WWW.COLLEGEOFPHARMACY.COM) and have a look at what CoAcS is currently working on.

The website contains many information about journals around the world, even lecture slides for the same topics we learnt in our degree here!

The MedEx! Apart from the huge exhibition, there was also the prize-giving ceremony for the winners!

I didn't have pictures of the other workshops we have done for today, such as the dementia workshop by CPPE, in association with Dementia Friends. Basically, Dementia Friends is an organisation that aims to spread the awareness of dementia (there is about a quarter of patients aged 65 and above and admitted to hospital care have dementia!) and to help people living with dementia.

(reference : http://www.dementiafriends.org.uk/ accessed on 21/4/2014)

If any of you are interested, Dementia Friends is currently recruiting DEMENTIA FRIENDS and DEMENTIA CHAMPIONS from universities. Do log on to their main website (http://www.dementiafriends.org.uk/) to find out more!

DAY 5

During the conference business (CB) today, the Constitution Working Party went through with us the changes that were recommended to amend the BPSA constitution. This was, to me, a very important session as the delegates at the session were representing the (roughly) 15000 pharmacy students in the UK, and the constitution changes were mostly to do with the condition which gives BPSA membership to students. There were around 100 delegates at the conference, which means each one of us were representing 150 students? Wow that's a big responsibility!

We had a Q&A session regarding community pharmacy, which dealt with questions such as the postgraduate pathways for community pharmacists, the shift towards Healthy Living Pharmacies (HLP), the mentality of community pharmacists being less "clinical" than clinical pharmacists in hospitals, and also the struggle to meet patient's needs and also the needs of the retail pharmacy business targets.

So how do we carry out our role as a pharmacist and also achieve the sales targets set by the retail pharmacy company? It was mentioned that as long as you help patients get the best out of their care at the pharmacy, business will naturally follow. We always perceive patient care and sales targets to be mutually exclusive, where in fact they overlap a lot! Again, it's about moving towards the HLP concept, getting more proactive to deliver good customer service and hence, your reputation will follow as well.

Today's talk was given by Mike Holden, the CEO of National Pharmacy Association (NPA). NPA is an organization that gives support to pharmacists and also pre-reg students in terms of educational materials and advice. In this talk, Mike talked about the concept of MECC - Making Every Contact Count! It is so important that we treat every patient with the utmost care possible, and we make every encounter with patients significant. Review their use of medicines, their lifestyle, reemphasize on healthy lifestyle tips etc.!

Katy Parsons, the ex-president, giving her executive report and speech. She has been the (loud) voice for BPSA and is considered by many to be the future leader of the pharmacy world. I would definitely recommend you to have a chat with her. She has so many ideas that I'm sure any delegate would agree with me how inspiring she was at the conference.

Social event! Tonight was at the National Space Centre in Leicester, which was a really special venue compared to the other evening events.

On the left is Lauren Rose, ex-vice president, and ex-Nottingham (she's our awesome senior!) And I'm sure you all know our enthusiastic teacher in the middle, Gautam! 

Eating in an exhibition centre, how crazily fun is that?!

Gautam and Lauren having a go at the weather forecast recording machine. That really made our day!

And we had our chance too, though not really sure what we were doing!

Annual Conference Day 2 and 3

My apologies for the lack of photos. But I will try to add in any important contents which we learnt from the conference. So here's Day 2!

After a session of conference business (CB), we had a Q&A session on the pharmacy profession in general. The panel below included key players from the General Pharmaceutical Council, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, RPS Scotland and senior pharmacist from NHS England. In short, a whole lot of sector leaders giving us an insight into the challenges in the pharmacy world today!

In the background shows one of the motions debated during the CB prior to the Q&A session. Yeap, even 1st year students are really into the issues of pharmacy today. C'mon seniors, GET INVOLVED!

One crucial question directed to the panel was about how to address the lack of pre-reg training posts in the future. Some of the answers given was about modernizing the role of pharmacists to one which is more clinically-driven, not mainly dedicated to the dispensing process. It has been said that the reason why the number of training posts not going up is due to the lack of mentoring, training and development in the field of community pharmacy. 

There were suggestions to decrease the salary of pre-reg trainees to accommodate for more training posts, but of course, some people don't like that on the reasons of paying for accommodation, survival costs etc. It has also been said that although it may be unfavorable, due to the financial constraints in the NHS, this is probably the way forward and it also encourages employees to work up the career ladder to increase their salary pay.

Another thing said was that the demand for pre-reg training in the field of academia (teaching and research) in Schools of Pharmacy has increased recently. Though it is not very widely available, it is an additional sector apart from the community, hospital, primary care, and industry sectors to do your pre-reg. Of course, one point worth mentioning was that the MPharm degree can be used to venture into jobs not related to pharmacy, due to the uptake of transferable skills such as lab research, management, journal critique etc. 

(Reference : http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0043/00434053.pdf accessed on 21/4/2014)

One of the major changes that happened recently was with the pharmaceutical care setting in Scotland (read the paper "Prescription for Excellence" above), which is a good evidence that things can be improved without using excessive funds. It is more towards a change of mindset (something I'm trying to do here) on the things pharmacists can do to contribute towards an efficient healthcare force. Go and have a read, learn from Scotland!

One of the new concepts we were introduced to is that there is an increasing uptake of the trend to do E - SHOPPING. Although it may not be feasible now, there could potentially be the future of having medicines bought over the internet, somewhat like Amazon or Ebay. Now, if we pharmacists don't do our job well in terms of counselling and promoting health, then what is there to stop the rise of e-shopping, which is hassle-free, less human mistakes, more informative and widely available? This is something we should think about as we will eventually lose our role if we don't produce enough evidence and results to show how important we are!

Alright, enough of work! Now, dinner and socials!

Our Nottingham delegates dressed up for the night. Theme: Formal Business Attire

The night was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) dinner, which involved the presentation of the Reckitt Benckiser "Student of the Year Award". How do you win this competition? Well,....

It is true! I spoke to the finalists myself. You could win a tablet if you were the finalist. So look out for Reckitt Benckiser competition next year!!!

Many key individuals were there, including those from the RPS, GPhC, and even from other countries! So much opportunities to meet your future employers and learn from the experts! For the rest of the night, I'll let the pictures do the talking. 

DAY 3!

Wow there's four more days to blog about! After some more conference business (sorry I did not remember in detail what we debated, there were so many!), we had smaller group sessions with the Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA). As you guys know (probably), PDA is an avenue for pharmacists and even pre-reg students to seek advice on legal disputes. Many of the problems PDA give legal guidance to is on civil claims against pharmacists regarding mistakes (such as dispensing wrong medication to patients), compensation to patients (such as in negligence of care), regulatory cases (fitness to practice of pharmacists) etc. 

The most interesting part was when the PDA conducted a workshop on a case study regarding Student Fitness to Practise. We were divided into three groups, namely the Prosecution Team, Defence Team and the School Committee (neutral). Based on a scenario, we were instructed to devise questions to ask the pharmacy student, pharmacy supervisor, and other witnesses to gather the evidences and decide whether to impose any penalties onto the student. This was very enlightening as it clearly reflects the complications in the disputes of pharmacists, and how important it is to seek legal advice when you have a problem.

We were given an anology,

"There was a bird that lived at the farm. One day, the bird stopped by near a cow and the cow happened to take a dump on the bird by accident. The bird tweeted repeatedly until a cat noticed it and came over. Digging the bird out of the mess, the cat then immediately gobbled it up.

One day we may just be like the bird.  Not everyone who takes a dump on you is your enemy, nor everyone who saves your from the mess is your friend. So when life takes a dump on you, keep your mouth shut and call PDA!"

I'm not trying to promote the PDA here, but this is really important! There will always people who is willing to take advantage of the situation, so always seek for legal advice!

Moving on, we had a Q&A panel regarding hospital pharmacy! In this one hour,basically there were many questions thrown at them, from how to address the medication wastage issue, how to secure a hospital placement for pre-reg, to things like how do you cope with deaths in the hospital.

It was mentioned that, although we always look for the benefits of the pre-reg in hospitals, it is important to also keep in mind what you can offer to the trust or the job position. Regarding to how early we should go up the career ladder, the panel advises that in hospital pharmacy, there is so much opportunities to venture horizontally (in terms of the career ladder) and pick up skills in many other departments. This is much more favorable than just working up the career ladder vertically as you will need to understand the processes in many other departments and areas before being suitable for a managerial role.

In terms of split placements for pre-reg, it has been argued that this gives more opportunities for students to explore the hospital environment, as well as to experience as many different sectors of pharmacy as well. Although this is true, we have to consider from the employer's point of view as well. The panel mentioned that some employers wish to use the pre-reg year to train up students to be future employees at the trust, moreover the pre-reg post is fully funded by the hospital. Hence, it is not that viable to have students who have not decided on their future and train up another fresh qualified pharmacist from scratch again.

After that, we had a session with the European Pharmaceutical Students' Association (EPSA), which is the European version of BPSA. There is actually many programs catered for us, which is really beneficial, such as student exchange programs (such as TWINNET), EPSA training projects (to develop important soft skills), Drug Information Association (DIA) meetings and poster presentation awards (present your research poster which you have done in uni). We also had a little workshop discussion session to think of ways to spread the awareness of EPSA, one of which is these newsletters below :

(Reference : http://www.epsa-online.org/index.php/publications/newsletters)

Do subscribe and read these EPSA newsletters to find out more! 

Wow, what a post! To finish off day 3, I have a little pic here (courtesy of chloe) to sum up our buffet night sponsored by the PDA! There was also a charity auction session, in which you can donate your stuff and have other delegates buy them, with the money going to charity! Sometimes the Pharmaceutical Press also donate some text books which you can get at a lovely price, all for the goodness of charity! 

Theme : Traditional Dress. Look out for day 4 and 5!

72nd Annual Conference - Day 0 and 1

Welcome back to BPSA-Experience! I'll roughly describe my journey at the recent BPSA annual conference in parts. Don't hesitate to ask me anything about the annual conference! 

We arrived at 2pm to be checked into Travel Lodge, which is near to the De Montfort University (DMU), the host for the conference. Although day 0 started off a little quiet, things quickly began to heat up as we had the first evening socials at the Student Union bar of DMU!

There were many Year 1's attending so it was a whole friendly and open atmosphere to make friends. It's so easy to start a conversation with pharmacy peers as you can talk about almost anything, from which university you came from, to how difficult your OSCE's was!

There were group games, charades, and open dance floor to kick start the conference! Don't worry about not knowing how to dance, just do some silly moves and enjoy yourself! That's what everyone does!

After a long night, conference business (CB) began the next morning! This photo only showed less than half the people present. Maybe those guys were still slumbering due to the previous night!

Conference Business (CB) is the main element of annual conference, and is present in most parts of the week. It is aimed to bring up discussions and debates about motions which you guys can put forward as delegates, and then the whole delegation will vote on whether to pass it, be against it or abstain from having a stand on the argument.

Sorry guys! I only had this picture. For every motion, there is a proposer (that's me in this case!), and a seconder (Jit Siang in this case!). Both of us have to give a short speech (3-4 sentences) on why we put forward this motion. And then the debate starts. You can speak FOR the motion, AGAINST a motion, and ABSTAIN from having a stand on the motion. And the best part I felt was, if you feel like going against or abstaining from it, you HAVE TO have a speech for it to simply state why you choose so. This is so important as in summer placement / pre-reg interviews, you need to have an opinion about things and WHY you said so. 

Believe it or not, one of the motions was to replace the general aye (the "AYE" response to allow a standing order) to become "HOWL HOWL" like a fox! And instead of the chairperson saying "QUIET!" or something else, a motion was passed such that she should say "What Does The Fox Say"  and we go HOWL HOWL again! I personally found it lame at first but I started to love it over the week!

Marwah Zaki, the previous Northern Area Coordinator (NAC), presenting her executive report. As part of CB, executives will take turn to present to the delegation what they did over the year. Definitely worth listening if you are interested to run for an executive post!

One of the many things I love annual conference is to have the key people in the pharmacy world giving us first hand information about the sector and the reality. Here, Sue Ambler from Health Education England, talks about modernising pharmacy careers. WOAH what a jargon! In essence, it's about how the roles of pharmacist can evolve and expand, not only into community, hospital and industry pharmacy, and how our degrees and pre-reg trainings should suit that need.

On a side note, Sue talked about the few options to cope with excessive numbers of pharmacy student intake at present. One of which is to manage the number of students coming into the MPharm degree, and another which is to have a "break-point" at the third year of the degree to allow students to graduate with a bachelor's degree. Do have a read from the Health Education England website.

One of the things she said that really had an impact was that among the 157000 NHS employees in the UK, there are about 57000 employees who are professionals (Band 5-9), and among them, a WHOPPING 39000 people are pharmacists! Can you imagine if pharmacists lose their say in the healthcare sector, what will happen to all these people? We always think that pharmacists are somewhat obsolete in the healthcare line, but we account for more than 50% of the healthcare professionals employed! Now please do voice out to support our profession because WE HAVE THE CAPACITY TO DO SO (if everyone takes part)!

Well, conference wouldn't be perfect without evening socials right? The night of Day 1 was at More Restaurant, dress code: Cowboys and Indians! Thanks to DMU School of Pharmacy for their sponsor to feed the delegation a great buffet dinner!

We also had Scavenger Hunt on that evening, and also line dancing guided by these lovely ladies!

Not sure if you can spot me here!

Phew, that was just day 1! There's just too much to be said all in a blog post, so do stay tuned and look out for the post on day 2!