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 Video