Participants in the compounding competition, competition judges and event organizers gather in the Flex Lab.
At the end of October, student representatives for the Canadian Association of Pharmacy Students and Interns (CAPSI) ran competitions for Waterloo Pharmacy students. These competitions are an annual tradition held every fall term. All ten pharmacy schools across Canada host similar events, run by local CAPSI chapters.
The winners from each school proceed to compete at the national level. These will occur at the CAPSI-organized Professional Development Week (PDW) next January in Edmonton, Alberta. At PDW, the Waterloo Pharmacy’s winners will compete against winners from the nine other pharmacy schools for a chance to be the country’s best in their particular category.
There are four competition categories:
Patient Interview Competition (PIC): students conduct 15 minute interviews with standardized patients to complete a pharmacotherapy workup with the goal of identifying and resolving any drug therapy problems.
Angel Deng, Rx2018, counselling a standardized patient.
Over-the-Counter Competition (OTC): students conduct patient interviews with standardized patients to identify OTC drug-related problems. Students provide appropriate recommendations and counsel the patient.
Compounding Competition: students work in teams of four to create compounds that are therapeutically active and presented with the utmost pharmaceutical elegance.
Student Literacy Challenge (SLC): Pharmacy students share their insights on any subject involving pharmacy practice and write an article of up to 1000 words on their selected topic.
Competition was fierce and winners hailed from every Waterloo Pharmacy cohort:
- Compounding winners: Jeremie Lacroix, Krista Jones, Shams Ismaeil, Ridwaan Safi (Rx2020)
- PIC winners: Angel Deng Rx2018 (first), Cathy Zhang Rx2018 (second), Jenna Jenkins Rx2019 (third)
- OTC winners: Kelly Nguyen Rx2019 (first), Kristina Kozlovsky Rx2018 (second), Kris Mendoza Rx2019 (third)
- SLC winner: Sonya Dhanjal Rx2018 (first), Jenna Jenkins Rx2019 (second)
Professional Practice Lab Manager Robin Andrade were volunteer judges for the PIC competition.
Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all participants in this year’s competition. CAPSI would also like to thank all of the judges, standardized patients and competition coordinators (Louis Wei and Urooj Advani) who made this event possible.