Fourth-year pharmacy students Nicholas Wagner and Samah Abdallah will represent the College of Pharmacy in the national clinical skills competition at the 2023 ASHP Midyear Meeting in Anaheim, California, in December.
In September, the pair teamed up in the local competition sponsored by the Student Society of Health System Pharmacists at NEOMED.
The team of two will also compete in the statewide competition from the Ohio Society of Health System Pharmacy in late October.
During the local competition, teams had two hours to work up a complex patient case, using their knowledge and approved, limited resources. They then had two minutes to present their results and answer questions from a panel of judges, who decide the winning team.
“We did it last year, and we thought we did a good job,” Wagner said. “But we definitely missed some things. We were still P3s and hadn't quite had all of our therapeutics yet. So this year we really wanted to come back and show that we've grown and what we've learned.”
Besides showcasing their skills, the winning team also receives registrations to the national conference.
Both Wagner and Abdallah felt more confident and prepared entering this year’s competition.
“Since we had a few APPE rotations, we were kind of exposed to different disease states already. I feel like we both had some good experiences this year that already taught us a lot, and also taught us how to efficiently work up patients,” said Wagner.
“Your partner in the competition matters a lot,” Abdallah said. “You have to make sure you flow well together, that you work well together. We have a lot of experience together competing for different things. We've been in class together for three years and now on to APPEs. And so we know how each other's mind works. I think being able to work together and having experience working together already really, really helps.”
Since the cases are always new, and the pearls are always hidden, preparing for it can be a challenge.
“For this competition, it's hard to prepare because you never exactly know what you're going into. So you kind of have to have a strong clinical knowledge and be ready to dive right in,” Wagner said.
Every team across the nation is given the same patient case to work up. The case is a closely held secret, so there’s no clue about what focus areas to prepare for.
“They do have the past cases online on their website. It's useful to go through the cases, but when you're actually doing it, it's completely different,” Abdallah noted. “I think what really helped us is that we had a little bit of experience in the last year. I feel like we felt more confident in our answers. We were looking for every single little thing they could possibly ask us about because we knew the judges were not going to take it easy on us.”
While the pressure of competition can be somewhat stressful, the pair both enjoy the challenge of discovery that’s inherent in the cases.
“My favorite thing is when we get the case, we don't know anything going into it and when we finally latch on to, ‘oh, that's what's wrong!’ And then we hit the ground running from there. That's my favorite part and that's what excites me about these competitions,” Wagner said. “It might be a rocky start at the beginning when you're really trying to figure out what's going on. But once you get that down, it's like, ‘Okay, we know our roles. We know where we're going with this.’”
And for Abdallah?
“I think, finding the pearls in the case that might be slightly hidden is something that's also really fun,” she said. “We know they put them in there on purpose. So just waiting for the judges to ask us a question about that, because we know that was something hidden.”
The team is looking forward to travelling to Columbus for the Ohio competition.
“The state competition will be great practice for the finals rounds at the national conference since that one comes first,” Wagner said. “I think it'll be great experience either way, whatever happens, I think that making it to this competition says enough.”