15 July 2012

11th Asia Pacific Pharmaceutical Symposium in Taiwan- Chapter 2

Day 2
(All photo credits to APPS 2012 Taiwan)

The second day of the APPS Taiwan was started with an opening ceremony.
Speeches were given by a few VIPs in the very beginning.

IPSF (International Pharmaceutical Student Federation)
APRO (Asia Pacific Regional Office) RWG (Regional Working Group) 2011-2013
Chairperson , Geoffrey Chai

 Chairperson of the 11th APPS in Taiwan, Henry Chu

spot us if you can.... x)

After opening ceremony, introduction of APRO was given by the chairperson of APRO RWG if I'm not mistaken. To those who are unfamiliar with APRO, APRO stands for Asia Pacific Regional Office. IPSF represents the pharmacy students in 84 countries worldwide, whereas APRO represents pharmacy students across the Asia Pacific to support and advance the aim and objectives of the Federation at the regional level.

This is the organization structure of APRO RWG 2011-2012 and they are from different countries:


A lecture regarding "Pharmacist Responsibilities to Society" was given by Prof. Oliver.
Code of Ethics for Pharmacist of AphA (American Pharmacist Association) are listed as below:
1) A pharmacist respects the covenantal relationship between the patient and pharmacist.
2) A pharmacist promotes the good of every patient in a caring, compassionate and confidential manner.
3) A pharmacist respects the autonomy and dignity of each patient.
4) A pharmacist acts with honesty and integrity in professional relationships.
5) A pharmacist maintains professional competence.
6) A pharmacist respects the values and abilities of colleagues and other health professionals.
7) A pharmacist serves individual, community, and society needs.
8) A pharmacist seeks justice in the distribution of health resources.

They maybe different from what we learnt in our Professional Skills in Pharmacy Course (UK) but the idea of each code of ethics are the same.


Next, "Drug safety and Pharmacist Responsibility Education" given by Mary Tai.
The adverse drug reaction (ADR) are unpredictable and unexpected. The medication errors can be made by human or system. Some activities can be given to promote awareness such as posters and brochures distributes to mass transportation system, hospitals and health centres; providing press releases of the information of drug injury relief in mass media and etc. A pharmacist acts as a caregiver, decision maker, communicator, leader, manager, life-long learner and a teacher. Pharmaceutical services is given to evaluate the usage of medicine and its therapeutic outcome to improve effectiveness and patients' quality of life.


Pre-Patient Counseling Event Workshop and Clinical Skills Event Workshop was held after the lectures.
It was given by Eric So from Canada, the Chairperson of professional development of IPSF. We had learnt about the techniques of counseling patients which are useful for our future. For the first year students who are going to second year, this might be helpful to all of you. Some had already taught by our lecturers in UNMC.
The overall counselling provided should be short (5-10minutes), concise and private. If you think you need more time for counselling, ask if they are free to listen. Whatever informations given by the patients must be kept private and confidential. This is the sequence: Intro --> Information gathering --> Medication counseling --> Interaction / storage / disease state explanation --> conclusion.
For the information gathering, you may ask these questions:
  • Is this for yourself?
  • Have you ever have this medicine before?
  • What did you doctor tell you?
  • What do you already know about your condition?
  • Do you have any allergies?
  • Are you currently pregnant or breastfeeding?
  • Weight of the children? (Never assume the weight of the children as some dosage of the medicine depends on the weight of children)
  • Ask if there are any other current prescription / non- prescription medicine / OTC medicine to check interaction. (Herbs and vitamins also can be contraindicated to the drug!)

Always ask to see if patient has any question periodically to prevent any further confusion and save time. Eg: Do you understand so far? Stop me if you don't understand.
Write down recommendation when necessary and repeat & summarize the key point about the recommendation. Always ask patient to repeat the key points to ensure they understand the medication well.

In the conclusion, remind that he or she can phone or drop in pharmacy for further questions. Besides that, offer to phone the patients in a few days or provide written educational leaflets or informations. (May check up on patient once a week or depends on patients condition).

For the medical Jargon, you should simply the language, such as heart attack instead of myocardial infarction. However, it doesn't matter if they could understand the medical term. (For doctors, nurses, dentists and etc.)

NEVER NEVER EVER show your SYMPATHY to patients. For example: saying "I hope you will get better soon.'' NO! Instead, show EMPHATY to the patients, being able to enter someone else's life, to perceive their feelings and their meaning and hence, the patients will feel your trustworthy. "It must be hard for you.... I understand your feelings...etc"



Next, PPAC (Pharmacy Profession Awareness Campaign) workshop was given by Melissa from Malaysia and Jane from Taiwan.


So for this workshop, the participants learnt some techniques that can be useful in organizing an awareness campaign. For example, the number of people needed to promote the campaign, the venue of the campaign, the materials needed, the slogan, the funding from sponsorship and etc. During this workshop, the participants formed groups to create a poster of campaign where the title and slogan were decided ourselves.





Auction Night
All the events above were held from the morning to the evening. In the evening, all the participants leave to National Taiwan University Conference Hall for Auction Night. Participants brought their souvenirs or some products from their country for auction and the fund raised will be given to the students who have financial problem to take part in IPSF and other international activities. The Auction night was AWESOME. I really want the blue IPSF shirt and the APPS 2013 in Japan shirt.. T-T






Short highlights of the Auction Night. Performance in the beginning and the ending..


My personal comment, although this is my first time participate in Auction Night and I didn't actually buy anything, I found out that Auction Night was really really fun. Sometimes you do feel excited when people successfully bought the package they want. The IPSF shirt, APPS Japan shirt, KLCC pewter, wine and alcohol from different countries, souvenirs etc.. one word... AWESOME.

Conclusion of the day,
We learnt a lot in Day 2 especially during the patient counseling event and clinical skills workshop. Those  informations are really helpful for our future.



Day 3, to be continue....

--------edited---------

This is the example of patient counseling video took during the Pre-Patient Counseling Event workshop.  There was an introduction and some questions asked before this video was taken...


Magdalene Foo
IT Officer of PharmNotts 2012-13

No comments:

Post a Comment