EAFP Annual Conference Catania, Italy
Between the 24th and 26th of the past month of June, the European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP) and all its members gathered in Catania, a beautiful city in the island of Sicily, Italy, to hold their Annual Conference, which topic was “Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Aspects of Pharmacy Education: Learning Across Health Professions”. EPSA was once again invited by EAFP to present the students’ vision on the topic and to discuss with academics from all over Europe the importance of Multidisciplinary Education and related areas in pharmacy curriculum. The Conference had a great variety of speakers, going from pharmaceutical scientists to industrial pharmacists, passing through medical doctors and biologists, which made this a unique event to discuss how professionals from such different backgrounds can collaborate in order to improve the outcomes for the patient and to fulfill the responsibilities of what being an excellent healthcare professional is. Most of the speakers presented to the audience a variety of good examples of multidisciplinary collaboration in higher education pharmacy institutions, either in pregraduate and postgraduate education, such as the GIMMICS project on Pharmacy Practice in Vrije Universitëit Brussel, the Masters in Pharmaceutical Engineering in the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Lisbon or the Modular Pharmacy Education in the University of Oslo, among others. This event gathered also the Pharmine Consortium in a joint meeting to discuss the path of the project and further steps that should be taken. Anette Krokaas, EPSA President and Aja Petrikova, EPSA HLM represented EPSA in this meeting. There was also a students’ session moderated by myself together with
some students from Catania that gave their views on the Conference topic and presented the Italian (namely the Catanian) pharmacy curriculum and its pros and cons. From this students’ meeting resulted a Statement of Opinion embraced by EPSA with some recommendations for EAFP regarding the Conference and its topics for the future in order to increase the students’ participation. EPSA also presented a poster named “Multidisciplinar Education in Pharmacy: are students aware of its importance?”, following a survey carried online through all EPSA members and student partners like EMSA, EDSA and IPSF. Next year, the EAFP Annual Conference will be hold in Lisbon and once again EPSA will take part on it. We’ll keep you posted and we hope to meet you in Lisbon in 2011, after the 34th EPSA Annual Congress for this great event! João Duarte EPSA Vice President of Education 2010/2011
(EPSA also presented a Poster with the title “Multidisciplinary Education in Pharmacy: are students aware of its importance?” page nr 7)
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