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!
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