Pamela Lyons, Class of 2014 was awarded 1st Runner Up in the National Patient Counseling Competition during the ASPhA Conference held in LosAngeles, California.
Here is an account of the award in Pam’s own words:
This past March, I had the honor of representing the University of Pittsburgh during the APhA-ASP annual meeting at the National Patient Counseling Competition. Each year, every school of pharmacy in the United States has a local competition to choose one representative to compete at the national level. This year, approximately 124 schools sent candidates, the largest number of participants to date. With the help of Dr. Karen Pater and last year’s competitor who placed in the top 10, Luke Berenbrok, I arrived in Los Angeles fully prepared to counsel. The competition was broken up into two rounds: during the first round, every school representative randomly selected a prescription and had five minutes to counsel a patient how to safely and effectively take the medication. The top 10 competitors moved onto the final round where they counsel a more challenging patient. The winners were announced at the closing ceremony. This was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet other student pharmacists, test my nerves in front of a camera, and practice my counseling skills. It was thrilling for me to make the top 10 and even more exciting to take second place! I can’t describe how much I learned in the couple of weeks leading up to the competition, not only about the list of potential drugs, but also how to encourage patients, handle difficult questions, and give warnings about drugs without scaring the patient to death. The University of Pittsburgh excels at training students to interact with patients and offer advice on safe medication use, and I was glad to put these skills into action! My success at this national competition could not have been possible without the support of the School of Pharmacy. The videos of the top 10 participants will be up on YouTube soon!
