Abigail Thibodeaux is a third-year PharmD candidate at the Southwestern Oklahoma State University College of Pharmacy.
At the start of the late March weekend, the San Antonio Riverwalk streets and local restaurants were filled with pharmacists and students from across the nation as St. Patrick’s Day and the 2022 APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition kicked off. The aroma of local food moved through the crowds and the festive green river flowed as lunch breaks and dinner feasts were held among pharmacy friends both old and new. Back at the convention center, there were successful meetings intertwining networking with cutting-edge knowledge.
To attend APhA2022 was the experience of a lifetime. Not only did it allow for strengthening relationships among familiar faces, but it once again fostered new connections with other students and pharmacists from across the nation after a couple years of virtual meetings.
Connecting again
In 2022, the APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition mirrored its familiar past routines while taking on new changes, ideas, and insight since the pandemic knocked us off our feet. APhA gives us the ability to adapt and connect with one another through robust organizational networks and everchanging health care matters while maintaining similar professional expectations. I had many notable encounters, including one with a student pharmacist from another state whose father was a professor at my undergraduate college and meeting national fraternity brothers and other pharmacy affiliation members spanning from Texas to Michigan and upstate New York.
We were encouraged to mingle and exchange many Instagram follows, particularly in the “Region Meet and Greet” and “APhA–ASP First Timers Session” meetings. These meetings also introduced the variety of positions that students have to choose from if they desire to further their career beyond their school chapters. APhA–ASP meetings were abundant with current pharmacy business, including visions for point-of-care testing and prescriptive authority, discrediting false health care information online, reimbursement, safe staffing practices, transgender name preferencing, and many other topics that demand innovation.
The passion for policy matters flared in each meeting among students and pharmacists as we discussed new policy changes that would shape the future of pharmacy health care standards. APhA2022 was rich with diversity and had much to offer in terms of potential job opportunities and learning experiences for students in addition to exposure to many pharmacists heavily involved in APhA. At the APhA and APhA–ASP Opening General Sessions, I was inspired to learn how student pharmacists and pharmacists are making a difference in the lives of those affected by the pandemic, administering thousands of vaccinations, and providing countless other services in times of need. The awards revealed how much each APhA–ASP Chapter truly pours out into our communities to leave a great positive impact.
My NPCC experience
A unique experience at APhA2022 encouraged further practice and competition among student pharmacists, who proved to have the ability to exert and showcase their patient care skills. The National Patient Counseling Competition (NPCC) allowed for the local winner of each attending school from across the nation to compete at the national level, resulting in nearly 100 competitors.
Competing in the NPCC truly opened my eyes to the exceptional professional skills that student pharmacists encompass. The amount of talent, care, and ability to provide patient care through counseling is uniquely demonstrated by each these competitors for the chance to win a monetary prize as well as a seat on the NPCC judges’ panel for the following year. APhA’s Lynette Plowden and the rest of the NPCC staff had the counseling competition running like a well-oiled machine, never missing a beat in the flow of the competition while reassuring and carefully instructing us competitors to give it our best efforts. The NPCC coordinators made clear that they believed each competitor in the competition could demonstrate our abilities and do an outstanding job in the competition. The whole process was both professional and thrilling—they made certain of that!
A special time
It was truly a breath of fresh air to finally attend a large-scale conference in person after enduring the brunt of the pandemic in our nation for many long months. It was a special time to meet again, see each other’s friendly faces, hear new voices, smell the aroma of coffee in early morning meetings, and to experience the exciting and bustling dynamic of APhA meeting activities.