Triumphs at TSHP 

UHCOP Students Win Team Competitions, Individual Honors at TSHP Annual Seminar April 12-14 in Frisco

April 17 — UH College of Pharmacy Pharm.D. students captured several team-based competition titles as well as individual honors, including a statewide leadership post, at the 2019 Texas Society of Health-System Pharmacists Annual Seminar April 12-14 in Frisco, Texas.

The team of first-year Pharm.D. students Duc Huynh and Ricky Huynh-Phan won the P1 Category of the Clinical Skills Competition, which requires each team to develop and present a therapeutic plan for a patient based on information contained in the patient's chart to a panel of judges. The plan should identify and assess all acute and chronic medical problems, drug-related problems, and health care needs of the patient, and team members must be prepared to explain and defend their assessments and recommendations live to the panel.  

Also bringing home a first-place win in the Leadership Challenge competition was the UHCOP team of Amilda Medina, Eileell Nguyen and Van Nguyen. "Designed to help students further explore their roles as leaders in the healthcare field," the competition requires teams to submit a 5-10 page action plan for responding to a case scenario involving a hospital-based controlled-substance diversion incident.

Specific components of the plan were to include defining and prioritizing the key problems, identifying specific personnel or units who need to be involved in the resolution, and presenting three strategies for preventing the problem from recurring, with a final course selected and presented to judges. Two of the three teams participating in the live competition at the TSHP meeting were from UHCOP (see full story). 

Jennifer Dela Pena received an Honorable Mention in the Disease State Management Competition, which requires individual students to review presenting case information, interact with a mock patient, assess and evaluate the patient's response and adherence to the therapy, and draft a progress report on the session and any changes to medication regimen. The competition is a live event, with one of the three judges in the role of the mock patient.

In addition, third-year student Niha Zafar was elected and installed as the Chair of the TSHP Student Section. Zafar also serves as the 2018-19 president of the UHCOP Chapter of the Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists. 

Third-year Pharm.D. student Aimen Naveed has been awarded the Gulf Coast Society of Health-System Pharmacists Leadership Scholarship from the TSHP Research & Education Foundation. Naveed currently serves as UHCOP Pharmacy Council president and has been selected for the 2019-20 Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center Longitudinal Clinical Experiential Program, a competitive program that allows students to complete nearly all of their advanced pharmacy practice rotations at the same institution.