November 20, 2008
Deanna Scinto and Anna Polyak emerged as the winning team in the
recent Clinical Skills Competition held annually in St. John’s
College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions. Nicole M.
Maisch, Pharm.D., of the Clinical Pharmacy Practice Department,
reports that this year’s competition, held in October, was
“tough.”
“Everyone did a great job! I thank all teams for participating.”
She notes that Lawrence King and Megan Cowles clenched second-place
and Nick Brown & Melissa Tergesen were the third-place winners.
She also extends particular thanks to Pharmacy faculty members
Danielle Ezzo, Pharm.D., Priti Patel, Pharm.D., and Maha Saad,
Pharm.D., who judged the competition.
The first-place team will represent St. John’s at the
National Clinical Skills Competition in Orlando, FL on December
6-7 at the American Society of
Health-System Pharmacists’ Midyear Clinical Meeting.
Dr. Maisch, who has run the College’s professional skills
contest since 2000, is also the Director of Drug Information
Services at Long Island
Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY. She explains that the
annual contest is an opportunity for Pharmacy students to practice
their patient care planning skills in a fun way.
“The fifth- and sixth-year students sign ups as teams of two and
are provided with a written patient case scenario provided by
ASHP,” she explains. “They have two hours to identify and
prioritize all the medical problems that the patient has and
recommend appropriate drug therapy to manage the patient’s disease
states/medical problems.”
Dr. Maisch adds that the teams are each provided with standard
print references. In addition, they must come up with a
monitoring plan to avoid/identify medication toxicity and make sure
the drug therapy recommended is effective. After the two
hours have passed, each team has10 minutes to present their care
plans to the faculty judges and participate in a question/answer
session. Judges evaluate both the written care plan and the
oral presentation.
“Our expectations are high for Deanna and Anna,” she states.
They will be competing against teams from 96 schools and colleges
of pharmacy in the national event. We know they will make us
proud.”