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!
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!
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