Student Pharmacist Places in the Top 10 at National Competition

Ellsworth competed against 114 students from other pharmacy schools in the U.S.

By Katie Morneau
April 15, 2009

Brian Ellsworth, a third year PharmD student at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, placed in the top 10 at the national Patient Counseling Competition at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas in early April. Ellsworth was one of 114 students participating in this year’s competition.

Each year, the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy chapter of the American Pharmacists Association – Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP) hosts a Patient Counseling Competition in conjunction with the parent organization. This competition gives students the opportunity to utilize the patient counseling and education skills they have attained through pharmacy school. This year, 31 students signed up to participate, double the number from the 2008 competition. Each of the students who participated was presented with a prescription and asked to counsel faculty members, staff, or practice lab teaching assistants who posed as patients. The top ten students from the preliminary round advanced to the final competition where the patient scenarios became more challenging. The final round involved a more complex counseling situation where the participants again selected a prescription at random and were asked to counsel the patient on safe and effective drug use. In addition, the patients in the final round displayed personality characteristics such as anxiousness, confusion or apathy with the intent of challenging the participants’ ability to convey pertinent information in a realistic situation.

The ten winners of this year’s competition were: Brian Ellsworth, Ann Lang, Will Albanese, Reisel Burger, Kelly Martin, Rita Kasliwal, Jessica Holstein, Shirley Lee, Sheryl Thedford, and Kim Wu.

As the School’s first place winner, Ellsworth won travel expenses to the APhA annual meeting to represent the School of Pharmacy in the national patient counseling competition. Ellsworth, along with the other finalists in the national competition, was recognized during the APhA-ASP Awards Ceremony.