National Patient Counseling Competition
The goal of the APhA-ASP National Patient Counseling Competition is
to encourage student pharmacists in their efforts toward becoming better
patient educators. The competition is designed to reflect changes that
are occurring in practice, to promote and encourage further professional
development of the student pharmacist and to reinforce the role of the
pharmacist as a health care provider and educator.
The competition begins on the local level as students compete to be
the national representative from their school or college of pharmacy.
The competition on the local level may be funded from a variety of
sources such as official college funds, locally obtained funding, state
association support, and student fund-raising activities. Both the
locally awarded prizes and the travel expenses for the winner to compete
in the national competition will be the responsibility of the school or
college of pharmacy. Each of the top ten finalists that compete in the
final round of local competition will receive an award, compliments of
APhA-ASP.

Once the local winner from each school or college of pharmacy is
decided, this individual will schedule an appointment to compete on the
national level at the Annual Meeting & Exposition. The national
competition is divided into the preliminary round and final round. At
the preliminary round, students select a simple practice scenario at
random and are required to counsel a patient on the appropriate use of
the drug involved. Students are then given time to refer to the
reference sources available in the model pharmacy. After consulting the
references and determining the appropriate information for the patient,
the participants counsel the patient. Evaluations are based on the
content and style of the counseling presentations. The ten highest
scoring participants are then invited to the final round.
The final round involves a more complex counseling situation where
the participants again select a prescription at random and are asked to
counsel the patient on safe and effective drug use. In addition, the
patient in the final round will display personality characteristics such
as anxiousness, belligerence or apathy to challenge the participants'
ability to convey pertinent information in a realistic situation. The
top ten finalists in the national competition will be recognized during
the APhA-ASP Awards Ceremony and will receive a prize compliments of
APhA-ASP. The four top winners of the national competition will also
receive cash prizes.
NPCC materials are mailed to all chapter advisors in early fall each
year.
For questions or to schedule an appointment contact:
APhA-ASP
National Patient Counseling Competition Coordinator
Lynette Hamilton
800-237-2742, ext. 7514
lhamilton@aphanet.org
› NPCC
Competition Guidelines
› NPCC
Past Recipients
› NPCC 2009 Competition
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