Meghan Duquette, a third year student in the College of Pharmacy, will represent Belmont at this year’s national Patient Counseling Competition presented by the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP).   Meghan was the winner of this year’s school competition in the College of Pharmacy coordinated by the local chapter of APhA-ASP.   The national competition features local winners from 120+ pharmacy schools across the country.   This year’s competition will be held in Orlando, FL at the end of March.

The goal of the APhA-ASP National Patient Counseling Competition is to encourage student pharmacists in their efforts toward becoming better patient educators. The competition is designed to reflect changes that are occurring in practice, to promote and encourage further professional development of the student pharmacist and to reinforce the role of the pharmacist as a health care provider and educator.

The national competition is divided into the preliminary round and final round. At the preliminary round, students select a simple practice scenario at random and are required to counsel a patient on the appropriate use of the drug involved. Students are then given time to refer to the reference sources available in the model pharmacy. After consulting the references and determining the appropriate information for the patient, the participants counsel the patient. Evaluations are based on the content and style of the counseling presentations. The ten highest scoring participants are then invited to the final round.

The final round involves a more complex counseling situation where the participants again select a prescription at random and are asked to counsel the patient on safe and effective drug use. In addition, the patient in the final round will display personality characteristics such as anxiousness, belligerence or apathy to challenge the participants’ ability to convey pertinent information in a realistic situation.

The top ten finalists in the national competition will be recognized during the APhA-ASP Awards Ceremony and will receive a prize compliments of APhA-ASP. The four top winners of the national competition will also receive cash prizes.