APhA–ASP 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 fundraising 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 10 finalists who compete in the final round of the local competition will receive an award/prize, compliments of APhA–ASP and CVS Health.

Once the local winner from each school or college of pharmacy (one chapter, one participant) is decided, this individual will schedule an appointment to compete on the national level. The national competition is divided into the preliminary round and final round. At the preliminary round (conducted virtually), students are given a randomly selected prescription (based on one of the drugs from the 10 drug list) 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 10 highest scoring participants are then invited to the final round.