APhA-ASP Student Pharmacist Writing Contest 1st Place Winner

Nicole Silva is currently a P1 (3rd year) student pharmacist at MCPHS University, Boston. Nicole is the 1st place winner of the 2021 APhA-ASP Student Pharmacist Writing Contest at MCPHS University Boston chapter.

What was your inspiration for applying to pharmacy school? How has your vision changed since you first started pharmacy school?

My inspiration for applying to pharmacy school has always been on the basis of wanting to help out patients who come see me. During high school, I had already been working in the healthcare field and knew that this was my calling. The pharmacy profession has always gravitated towards me, I thought knowing hundreds of drugs and their mechanisms is impressive, and my favorite subjects were geared towards the sciences. However, just thinking the profession was interesting is not enough to keep anyone motivated for 6 years, so I had to find more purpose in this major. My vision has changed since I first started, but I think it has made me appreciate the field of pharmacy more. During my White Coat Ceremony, one of the keynote speakers expressed to view our classes as tools to being the best healthcare workers we can be. She specifically emphasized that everything we are learning now will affect every clinical decision we make, and this will directly impact a patient's well being and care. This struck me as a wakeup call to not necessarily view my classes as something I have to "pass" in order to progress to the next academic semester, but to understand and be able to put it into play because a patient's life could potentially be at risk. This new way of thinking has made me curious as to why something works the way it does, and not to just take the information as is. For me, my ultimate goal is to become the best pharmacist I can possibly be, and hearing that quote from the keynote speaker inspired me to put my brain and heart into learning the profession.

What was something you learned during pharmacy school that has altered your perspective about the pharmacy field? How would you utilize this knowledge and help the public better understand the role of pharmacists in healthcare?

In pharmacy school, I was taught that pharmacists are also a critical component of the healthcare team. Most of the time, people don't know that pharmacists are required to go through doctorate training to become as knowledgeable as they are. Only in the most recent years, especially with the coronavirus, have pharmacists really been seen as equivalent to other professionals working in the field. I initially applied to pharmacy school thinking that I could either work in a community pharmacy, or get lucky and get a position at a hospital. Only after doing more research did I find out that pharmacists are a critical component of a lot of other, slightly less common, roles like running clinical trials, working with insurance companies, and even having positions in the government. In addition, pharmacists are the most knowledgeable clinicians when it comes to drugs, specifically their mechanisms of actions, their side effects, their interactions, and so forth. I think that because more people are starting to realize how much pharmacists can do and know, they can be used in more clinical- type settings. There are benefits to this for the public because pharmacists are located at every community pharmacy, so when a patient needs help with a medical situation, they can ask a pharmacist and get advice instead of having to either go to an emergency room or wait to get booked with their primary care providers. We can hopefully start to see more shift in services pharmacists can provide like vaccine clinics and telehealth calls, and these are also beneficial because they are local for patients. In order for the public to better understand, we must encourage patients to use services provided by us to advocate for their health and well being. When pharmacists get seen for everything they know, there can potentially be a major shift in the way we are seen by the public as well.

If you were a freshman again, what advice would you give to yourself and why?

If I were a freshman again, I would advise myself to find a way to study that works effectively, and to try to get out of that mindset of cramming for an exam a couple days before it has to be taken. The information I was learning in my classes then, plays a part in the information that I'm learning now. Pharmacy school uses the pre-requisite courses to build a foundation of knowledge that will get added on to. If I grasped onto that information better my freshman year, I wouldn't have had to relearn it now, which adds even more workload onto my already hectic plate. However, now I feel as though my efforts to retain information by changing up my studying pattern is going to be beneficial in the long term. Creating healthy study patterns are a crucial component to the pre-professional courses since it builds you up for the more academically challenging professional years.