OTC/Herbal Patient Counseling Competition

For the first time since I started school at UCSF, I participated in the School of Pharmacy's one of many competitions today. My main motivation for becoming part of the OTC/Herbal Patient Counseling Competition was to show support (since very few of my classmates had expressed any interest). I also wanted to get some hands-on experience in what a therapeutic oral exam would be like, in preparation for next spring quarter's toughest class.

As someone not really living for the "thrill" of competing and inexperienced in working under time constraints, I got really nervous thinking about it last night. Although I regretted signing up for the competition and thought about quitting several times throughout the course of last night and this morning, I decided to bite the bullet for thirty minutes and risked making a fool of myself in front of a panel of judges, composed of two faculty members that I highly respect for their works in herbal medicine (Dr. Cathi Dennehy & Dr. Candy Tsourounis), Dr. William Soller and Chris Nguyen (a UCSF-graduated pharmacist).

With practically no prior preparations, except for our faint OTC knowledge from this year's courses, my partner (Hilary) and I had 15 minutes to read and prepare for our presentations. We were given a case, which contained symptoms of two self-treatable disease states and the patient's information. Hilary SOAPed out the disease state for more thorough presentation while I was responsible for a quick counseling on the simpler disease state. Basically, healthcare professionals use the SOAP sheet as a standardized way to communicate with each other. It contains the patient's subjective and objective information, the pharmacist's assessments of the problem and plans to solve it.

It seemed like we just walked in the preparation room with the case when the five-minute warning was given. We barely had time to read the case and quickly jot down some essential information from memory and the few facts we could look up with the references provided. We were given ten minutes total for the presentations. While Hilary presented the case as if she was sharing the information with other healthcare professionals, I had a little time to mentally organize and strategize my speech. I thought Hilary did an excellent job and was glad that she agreed to take the more involved part.

When she was done, I talked to the judges as if they were my patient. I think I remembered to convey most of the essential information, such as the cause of the problem, the name and class of medication used to treat the condition, desired outcomes, directions for usage, possible side effects, storage information, etc. I think I spoke rather quickly because I couldn't calm my nerves.

I don't think we used up the alloted time, but feel that we did well in general. It would have been better had I not been so nervous, though. Hilary and I both felt that we made a good team. She complimented me on my empathy for the patient.

There was a total of five teams, 2 first-year teams and 3 second-year teams and the top 3 will be rewarded with gift cards (courtesy of The Center for Consumer Healthcare, I think). I have no clue whether we will win since we didn't get to listen to the other teams' presentations. Regardless of the results, I'm glad I stuck to what I had set out to do despite my anxieties about competitions and my presentation skills.