PSAIRISH PHARMACEUTICAL STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION

Jan, 2015Issue 2

IN THIS EDITION

CAASP and what you need to know about finding your MPharm placement

Professional Career Profile: Dr. Tamasine Grimes

Committing to a committee - A Pharmacy student’s perspective

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Changes are rising rapidly over the horizon for Pharmacy students in Ireland. Though the in-tegrated five-year MPharm programme was

launched last month in PSI House by the Minister of Health Leo Varadkar and will take its first stu-dents this September, there are some more imminent changes of interest to current students. The National Pharmacy Internship Programme (NPIP) as it is currently known, though technically optional, is mandatory for any student who wishes to qualify and practice as a pharmacist. One of the requirements for recognition of a pharmacy qualifi-cation by the EU is a minimum of six months train-eeship in either a pharmacy open to the public or a hospital’s pharmacy department. Students have the option of taking a full twelve month placement in a clinical setting or splitting the programme in to two six month placements; one clinical and one non-clin-ical placement in a range of possible settings such as research, regulatory and industry.Previously, though exceedingly rare for a student to not have found a suitable placement before the start of the programme, the process involved in applying for internships was fraught with potential complications. The unstructured nature of selecting and applying for internships allowed for some degree of flexibility yet

it added a great deal of unnecessary stress to what is always a highly stressful year for students. Interns starting in September 2015 will be applying through the Central Application and Selection Pro-cess (CAASP) system newly-developed by RCSI at the behest and with the funding of the PSI. The process is designed to overcome the many issues students en-countered with the previous system such as poor tim-ing of interviews, repeating applications to multiple employers and difficulties in matching placements for students who chose to split their placement with two different training establishments. The new system schedules specific periods in the year for applications, interviews and offers to streamline the process and reduce administrative workload and stress. It also at-tempts to match clinical and non-clinical placements to simplify the process for students seeking to split their placement year between two training establish-ments.Students are scheduled to be invited to register with CAASP on the 16th January where they complete an application form with their personal details, academ-ic results including any project/dissertation details, past employment details and referees. Though stu-dents may only upload a single cover letter, it is pos-sible to submit three CVs, each of which may be sent

CAASPRCSI have launched their new centralised application system to help students find and apply for placements for the National Pharmacy Internship Programme

What do students need to know?

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to different employers according to the sector in ques-tion. Students may select up to forty training estab-lishments before the tentative deadline of late January. Training establishments are then given an opportuni-ty to review candidates applying for their placement position. Training establishments which have received applications must shortlist a number of candidates (at least one) for interview before the 20th February. Candidates who have been selected for interview are informed immediately ahead of interviews which be-gin on the 26th February and take place within a three week period. Once the interviews have concluded, training estab-lishments will be asked to rank candidates in order of preference and submit their preferred candidates be-fore the 26th March. Offers are then issued in rounds somewhat similar to the CAO system. Students who receive round 1 offers have three working days to respond and two working days to respond to offers made in subsequent rounds. It’s important to note that accepting an offer is binding both for the student and training establishment. Students who accept an offer will not receive any further offers in subsequent rounds. There will be multiple rounds with offers be-ing made until the 30th April.If a student does not receive an offer in Phase 1, a re-peat of the above process in full is carried out from 25th May to June/July. Students unsuccessful in Phase 1 will have the opportunity to update their application and new training establishments may join the process at Phase 2 if they desire. At the time of writing, RCSI appears to have missed the date they scheduled for inviting students to reg-ister with the CAASP system. While these dates were never said to be anything but tentative, there is a cer-tain pervasive unease amongst students as to how ef-fective the system will be in practice. Not only does it require a great deal of change in the hiring practices of a number of training establishments but much con-cern has been expressed by students regarding certain issues that many believe may have been overlooked. Certainly, this may not be the case but the fact that students have not been given assurances to the con-trary as of yet is troubling. The pairing of clinical and non-clinical placements in particular appears to be quite challenging and there a great number of unanswered questions as to how this will work in practice. What will happen if a student has a prior agreement with one of the two paired training establishments? What if one of the two training es-tablishments ranks a student higher than the other? What if a student would like a particular combina-

tion of training establishments that is unavailable but would otherwise have been possible without pairing? It is unknown how the new system will handle these scenarios and this has generated much discussion and concern amongst students. Questions have also been asked as to how interviews will be scheduled during the three-week interview pe-riod. With students selecting up to forty placements and with only a three-week period scheduled for in-terviews (interspersed with many deadlines for 4th year students in all three colleges), it is uncertain how these will be scheduled so as to avoid clashes.

Though the system will certainly simplify certain as-pects of the process for students, there remains a great number of unanswered questions as to how the sys-tem will operate in practice. In the long-term, the new system should prove successful but it is only hoped that its first cohorts of students are not used as test subjects.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONSIf I accept an offer in an early phase or round that is not my first preference, will I receive further offers in subsequent rounds?

No. Applicants and training establishments who have ac-cepted an offer cannot renege. Once you have accepted an offer you are removed from the pool of applicants.

What will happen if I’ve already agreed to complete a placement with a particular training establish-ment?

The training establishment will be present on the CAASP system and must be selected during the application pro-cess. It would then be expected that the training estab-lishment will select you throughout the process.

Will there be enough placements to meet demand for the programme?

RCSI maintains that in the past there usually has been an oversupply of training establishments and that most if not all students successfully find a place-ment. Though it is not anticipated nor expected by RCSI that there will be a significant decrease in the number of interested training establishments, the success of the programme is contingent on training establishments’ cooperation.

by MENA ESKANDERPresident

Some might say that all pharmacists lead essentially similar careers. Some, being the more reasonable of us, might only go so far as to argue that all pharma-cists working in a particular area of practice lead

essentially the same career. We on the other hand disagree, in fact, we argue quite the opposite.

Your life and your career are products of your surround-ings, your experiences and most importantly of all your ac-tions. In pharmacy, we all share a common starting point yet undoubtedly, the paths we all create and choose may differ hugely.

Each month here at IPSA, we will interview a pharmacist with an interesting and perhaps less conventional career to share their experiences, invaluable insight and advice.

This month, we’re very kindly joined by Tamasine Grimes. Dr. Grimes splits her time between Trinity College’s School of Pharmacy where she is an Associate Professor of Prac-tice of Pharmacy and in Tallaght Hospital where she is a practising Clinical & Research Pharmacist. With over 15 years’ experience in hospital and community pharmacy as well as academia, Tamasine has worked throughout almost the whole spectrum of pharmacy practice, often concur-rently.

Thinking back to your time as a student, what was it that steered you towards hospital pharmacy?

With a sister working as a nurse, during secondary school, Tamasine had the opportunity to shadow and observe a va-riety of different healthcare professionals working in hos-pital. Through these experiences, she found herself most interested in the pharmacist’s job. This interest continued

to grow through her time as an undergraduate where she spent her summer between 3rd and 4th year gaining expe-rience in St. James’ Hospital’s pharmacy department and subsequently undertook a 12 month placement in the same hospital for her Pre-Registration year.

You’re an academic who is also a practising Clinical & Research Pharmacist, what does your typical day en-tail and does it differ from your colleagues or when you were “purely” a clinical pharmacist at the start of your career?

Though still a hospital pharmacist sharing many common duties with the pharmacy team in Tallaght, Dr. Grimes’ experience in research affords her a unique lens through which she can interpret and analyse information. With this

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has come a host of opportunities that has allowed her to enjoy an expansive and varied role in practice. In addition to her research in Trinity College, Dr. Grimes both con-ducts clinical research and provides conusltancy to other researchers in Tallaght Hospital.

As part of a project known as PACT (Collaborative Phar-maceutical Care in Tallaght Hospital), Dr. Grimes is both highly involved in and is investigating the effects of roll-ing out a novel collaborative pharmaceutical care service in the hospital in comparison to the current ward-based clinical pharmacy service. Traditionally in Ireland, hospital pharmacists are involved at admission and thereafter only on an ad-hoc basis. The new model being investigated by Dr. Grimes and colleagues attaches a pharmacist to a par-ticular team rather than ward and involves the pharmacist leading admission/discharge medicines reconciliation and prescription review as well as a new collaborative prescrib-ing initiative. With very positive results in tow, Dr. Grimes is involved with planning and facilitating the change in practice, communicating the changes to other members of the healthcare team, development of new SOPs and deliv-ering the service.

In addition to her research in the hospital, Dr. Grimes is directly involved in patient care and the supply of med-icines. Though no two days are the same, on a given day she may spends time taking patients’ medication history on admission, performing medication reconciliation on admission/discharge, prescription and Kardex review as well as ensuring the safe supply of medicines. As much of the dispensing is patient specific as opposed to bulk sup-ply of medicines to a particular ward, Dr. Grimes and her colleagues can deliver personalised clinical care leading to potentially safer medication use.

What do you feel are the most enjoyable and most chal-lenging aspects of your job?

Dr. Grimes feels that collaboration and cohesive teamwork both within the pharmacy department and the multidisci-plinary hospital team as a whole is by far the most enjoy-able part of her job. She also greatly enjoys being able to take part in planning and facilitating innovations in patient care and the safe use of medicines.

In terms of challenges; Dr. Grimes maintains that persever-ance is key and that all challenges, no matter how seeming-ly large, may and should be viewed as an opportunity for improvement. Arguably one of the biggest challenges faced by anyone in the public health service over the past few years has been the availability of resources, including man-power. All services are challenged to provide more with less. This may involve identifying which services deliver the most benefit, or identifying which patients are most vulnerable to medication related problems and require more urgent input.

To what extent has your postgraduate education shaped your career?

Dr. Grimes is a strong believer in and is committed to life-long learning. With an M.Sc.(Hosp. Pharm.), PG Diploma in Health Services Management and P.hD, she finds that each particular qualification brings with it its own new in-sight and learning and that each builds on the other.

In her experience, her masters degree gave her an essential grounding in hospital and clinical pharmacy and her P.hD compounded her interest in patient safety also giving her the necessary skills and experience to conduct research in to and to develop new and innovative pharmacy services. In addition to the education itself, the soft skills developed while undertaking a postgrad also stood to her greatly and the combination of both these skills and education have supported her professional career development.

Are there any particular misconceptions you’d like to clear up about hospital pharmacy?

Dr. Grimes feels it’s important to note that hospital phar-macy offers a rewarding and diverse career, with the oppor-tunity to be involved in all facets of medicines use from or-dering to prescribing to dispensing to administration and monitoring. An oft-repeated but understandable miscon-ception held by the general public and even other health-care workers is that pharmacists in hospital fulfil only a supply role. Historically, this certainly was the case. Nowa-days however, it’s very much the norm that pharmacists are involved in patient-facing clinical services. Though this is still relatively novel, the body of evidence to support these services grows every day and this can only spell good news for the future.

Considering the current economic climate, what advice would you give to a pharmacy student (or recent gradu-ate) aspiring to practice as a hospital pharmacist?

The most important thing is to stand out from the crowd and market your skills and experience as best as you can. Gaining as much experience as you can in hospital phar-macy is helpful but regardless of what type of practice you have experience in, it’s crucial to be able to translate and convey the relevance of your experience to a potential em-ployer. Pharmacists without previous hospital pharmacy experience have been hired before so never think that not obtaining a hospital placement will preclude you from ap-plying for a job as a hospital pharmacist. Developing your personal and professional skills (and perhaps mapping that to the PSI’s core competency framework) will also support you when it comes to applying for an internship or job. There are jobs available for hospital pharmacists in Ireland and more posts are being made available as the economy continues to improve so to summarise; persevere and nev-er stop improving yourself!

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EDITOR

Kyle Malone

LAYOUT & DESIGN

Mena Eskander

CONTRIBUTORS

Mena Eskander

Kyle Malone

SPECIAL THANKSDr. Tamasine Grimes

This publication is the responsibility of the Irish Pharmaceutical Students’ Association.

For advertising or to write for IPSA please contact info@ipsa-online.com

PERSONNEL

For a pharmacy student with limited time, some-times college can feel a bit like a buffet. Every-thing looks good and you know you want it all,

but it just can’t work out that way and for one reason or another, you’re going to have to choose.

Little did I know on my first day in college that I’d be joining a society. You always hear about these super pro-active students who organise parties and know everybody by name. I wouldn’t have painted myself as the type, but after a couple of suggestions from those in older years, I took the plunge and ran for class rep. I lost the election-kind of.

It turned out that instead of being academic rep, I was now going to be acting as society rep, for something called the pharmacy society. The first week of college was a bit overwhelming, and so the gravity of my situ-ation didn’t really settle in until 4.59pm the next Mon-day, when I was running to my first meeting. I was a tad more nervous than someone who was legally able to vote should have been in that kind of situation. I spent an hour sitting in the Pharmacy café nodding along to the musings of a dozen older students who hardly looked my way. By the end of it, I had resolved I wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t for me.

A week later I attended the “Welcome back party” we had planned in our meeting, where most of the four years descended on one place to give us newcomers a proper greeting to the course. In two hours, my deci-sion to quit the society went out the window.

It obviously had taken a real event to show me the work a committee can do. From then on, we went from strength to strength. Raising money for charity and selling tickets for college balls was the very last thing I had seen myself spending my time in UCC do-ing, but there I was, and I was loving it. I ran for elec-tion again the next year, and managed to squeeze in.

Jason Hayes, who currently sits on the IPSA commit-tee, had been in the trenches with me the year previ-ously, but now he was calling the shots. I can honestly say I’ll never forget the year that followed. The whole society-motivated by our members’ enthusiasm and our dogged determination-went under a complete makeover. Only a few months later we were winning college awards for our work, and still having an out-rageously fun time while doing so. Our portfolio of events was giving our members real benefit; we were still running college balls and soccer tournaments, but now we were working alongside our lecturers, and the whole pharmacy community in UCC seemed to hum with excitement.

When the year drew to a close and the elections loomed up in front of us, I knew where my sights were set.

It’s been well over two years since a rather shy first year stuck up his hand in chemistry class and was un-knowingly made a pharmacy society rep. I’d like to think I’ve shaken off the shyness, but my commitment to the pharmacy society has never changed. I’m cur-

COMMITTING TO A COMMITTEEA pharmacy student’s perspective

Irish Pharmaceutical Students’ Association

Issue 2, Volume 1 | Jan 2015

rently working as auditor, and this year followed Jason into IPSA, where I’m enjoying my role as Public Rela-tions officer. It’s hard to think of a time when I was just a pharma-cy student, and not a society member, and in truth it’s because that time does not exist. I’ve been on four committees in total since my first week in UCC, and I’m not sure if I’m done just yet.

The best part about committees like these is that you are never alone. There’s always someone with know-how and a helping hand. Every day is fresh with pos-sibilities, and there’s something about a good com-mittee that runs like clockwork. A good committee

is effortless, it’s enjoyable and it’s rewarding. A good committee are friends, long after they say their good-byes with the next election.

You’re the only person who can make yourself commit to a committee. Some people would admit it’s just not their forte. But what I would say to you is to remem-ber that not all paths can be seen from the crossroads. Sometimes you just need to take a step or two. And for God’s sake, if you do, remember to bring a pen to your first meeting!

by KYLE MALONEEditor

THANK YOUTo all those who have completed the IPSA Survey so far. You are helping us tailor our events and the society to suit you better. We aim to publish the results of the survey before the end of spring, if you have not yet completed the survey, please do so. It is completely anonymous and takes at most two minutes.

IPSA Irish Pharmaceutical Students’ AssociationRoom 33, Goldsmith Hall, Trinity College,Dublin 2

Email: info@ipsa-online.com

IRELAND’S NATIONAL PHARMACY STUDENT SOCIETY© 2015