Pharmacy Education Newsletter, Issue 5

PE Newsletter | February 2013

International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation

PEN Pharmacy Education Newsletter

education@ipsf.org http://pharmacy-ed.ipsf.org

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PEN editorial Dear IPSF’ers,

Another month has passed and it means that it’s time for me to proudly deliver you another issue of Pharmacy Education Newsletter.

Phuture Co-Ordinator 2012-2013

publication team ISSUE

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Ms. Alexandra Marques IPSF Chairperson of Media and Publications Mr. Rui Ferreira

content The 59th IPSF World Congress Scientific Symposium: Personalised Medicine Ms. Sandra den Hoedt

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Cover photo & Design wilkmanshire.wordpress.com http://loadpaper.com/id61808/wallpaper-original-dna-helix-metal-shape-background-download-1920x1080-pixel.html

Proofread by Ms. Yuqian Liu [Editor-in-Chief] Ms. Amber Liu

The 59th IPSF World Congress Educational Symposium Ms. Emma Veldman

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publications@ipsf.org editor@ipsf.org

Our next article come from Ms. Dinar Azzahra who tries to see both the pharmaceutical company and the patients view regarding recent controversy surrounding a new Hepatitis C drug combination.

In post-event section, Ms. Lina Salama explains in detail about Step On The Way, an annual event of the Egyptian Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation (EPSF). This event, which combines educational and professional development contents, aiming to prepare their members for a succesful carrer in the pharmaceutical field.

As usual, don’t hesitate to send your comments, suggestions, ideas, or questions regarding PEN to phuture@ipsf.org. They will be very much appreciated. Last but not least, thanks to Ms. Alexandra Marques and Mr. Rui Ferreira for their great art design.

Enjoy reading, viva la pharmacie!

IPSF World Congress

February 2013

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In another article from the series, Ms. Emma Veldman, Educational Symposium Officer of the 59th IPSF World Congress, sent her fellow students a letter explaining on why you should register to for the World

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Mr. Fahmi Fuady

As the registration period for various IPSF events around the world have started, the anticipation has also built upon the educational content of those events. Therefore starting from this issue, we have decided to run a series of articles by people who directly responsible for that. The first article from the series comes from Ms. Sandra den Hoedt, Scientific Symposium Officer of the 59th IPSF World Congress. Here, she shares her progress in identifying the speakers for the symposium and the reason she and her team chose ‘Personalized Medicine’ as the theme.

Congress and attend the Educational Symposium which she is organizing.

Ed innovation HCV Drug Discovery: Profit or Patients Ms. Dinar Azzahra

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Step On The Way Ms. Lina Salama Page12

Fiped Corner IPSF Student Learning Experience Questionnaire

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The 59th IPSF World Congress Scientific Symposium: Personalised Medicine

by Ms. Sandra den Hoedt, Scientific Symposium Officer of The 59th IPSF World Congress The start of the IPSF World Congress, 30 July 2013, is getting closer and this means a lot of work for the Reception Committee.

As you might have heard, the themes of the symposia were elected during the IPSF World Congress in Egypt. During the congress, it was decided that the theme for the scientific symposium will be ‘Personalised Medicine’. Right after the congress in Egypt, the search for the best lecturers have started and we are doing our best to have a great programme for the symposium!

But who are those people who are involved in finding the best lecturers?

ing their reply to create an interesting program, from what everyone will be able to take something home.

But why did we choose for Personalised medicine? And what does it mean?

If you type in ‘Personalised Medicine’ on Google, you get about 27 million results. Personalised Medicine is defined as the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient. It can be used to classify individuals into subpopulations that differ in their susceptibility to a particular disease or their response to a specific treatment. Preventative or therapeutic interventions can then be concentrated on those who will benefit, sparing expense and side effects for those who will not.

Personalized medicine uses new methods of molecular analysis to better manage a patient’s disease or predisposition towards a disease. It aims That would be Marouen Ben Guebila, the current to achieve optimal medical outcomes by helping chairperson of Pharmacy Education in the IPSF exphysicians and patients choose the disease manecutive and myself, Sandra den Hoedt, the Scientific agement approaches which likely to work best in Symposium Officer of the Reception Committee of the context of a patient’s genetic and environmenthe 59 IPSF World Congress. We also received a lot tal profile. Such approaches may include genetic of help from the pharmacy education task force of screening programs that may diagnose diseases IPSF. They helped us in the search of lecturers. We more precisely and their sub-types, or help physiapproached lots of lecturers and are currently awaitcians select the type and dose of medication best suited to a certain group of patients. page 4

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Personalized medicine is poised to transform healthcare over the next several decades. New diagnostic and prognostic tools will increase our ability to predict the likely outcomes of drug therapy, while the expanded use of biomarkers — biological molecules that indicate a particular disease state — could result in more focused and targeted drug development.

Personalized medicine also offers the possibility of improved health outcomes and has the potential to make healthcare more cost-effective.

IPSF World Congress. It is something that most of us will come in contact with during our future career, since the application of ‘Personalised Medicine’ in the Pharmacy and in pharmaceutical research is getting closer with each new discovery.

Source: http://www.personalizedmedicinecoalition.org/

Though sometimes described as a phenomenon of the future, personalized medicine is already having an impact on how patients are treated. Molecular testing is being used to identify those breast cancer and colon cancer patients who are likely to benefit from new treatments, and newly diagnosed patients with early stage invasive breast cancer can now be tested for the likelihood of recurrence. Personalized medicine promises many medical innovations, and has the potential to change the way treatments are discovered and used.

This makes ‘Personalised Medicine’ an excellent subject for the Scientific Symposium during the 59th

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PEN IPSF World Congress

The 59th IPSF World Congress Educational Symposium: Developing Pharmaceutical Care through Collaborative Practice

by Ms. Emma Veldman, Educational Symposium Officer of The 59th IPSF World Congress Dear students, Pharmaceutical care is changing continuously all over the world: the prevalence of chronic diseases increases, but also does the available range of medicines and other interventions.

Pharmacists need to keep proving their beneficial role in the healthcare system, by adapting to these changes and improving health outcomes. One way is to develop collaborative practice: although the degree of collaboration between pharmacists and other healthcare professionals varies a lot all over the world, there is still a lot to improve for everyone.

The knowledge and responsibilities of pharmacists are complementary to those of other health care professionals and therefore all these professionals have to work as a multidisciplinary team. Together they can aim to reduce medication errors, improve patient care and support their patients on their medicine use. Costs for healthcare can be reduced, while there is an increase in patients´ health outcomes.

It already starts for you as a student: you learn everything about medication and the effects on the human body, but a

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pharmacist cannot do its work in isolation. To get to the ideal patient care, you will have to learn on how you can achieve this together with other healthcare professionals. Moreover it takes some collaboration with the patient: a patient will be more willing to take his medication (properly) when he agrees with the treatment. Fortunately these subjects are getting more important in the pharmacy curriculum.

At the Educational Symposium of the 59th IPSF World Congress in the Netherlands you can learn more about what this means for your education and your future career. At this interesting and interactive day top pharmacists will share their experiences of how they have proven their beneficial role in collaborative healthcare practice and how this has developed pharmaceutical care.

I hope to see many of you at the Educational Symposium this summer!

Regards, Emma Veldman Educational Symposium Officer 59th IPSF World Congress

PEN FIPEd corner

FIPEd – IPSF Student Learning Experience Questionnaire: Your voice needs to be represented for evidence-based advancement of pharmacy education

by Ms. Naoko Arakawa, FIP Collaborating Centre Do you know how you can make an impact on education and pharmacy programmes? By contributing to the “FIPEdIPSF Student Learning Experience Questionnaire (SLEQ)”, which is where you can convert your individual learning experiences into global evidence for developing the future of pharmacy education.

There is much global interest in evaluating the quality and standards of professional pharmacy education as health policy world-wide becomes more focussed on extending the roles of pharmacy practitioners to provide more effective medicines-related health services. To achieve higher and equitable quality, the global infrastructure for pharmacy education needs to be mapped to the required competencies of pharmacy practitioners in order to meet the given health needs in any country. As pharmacy students are the heart of pre-service education, your input is vital in the development of educational policies and practices. It is of global interest and relevance to survey the student learning experience.

The SLEQ is the continuation of the IPSF Moving On II work, which was a project with the main focus on the pharmacy students’ perceptions on their education(data being collected since 2004 by IPSF) and has now been revised to include the students’ ways of studying about their degree based on Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ; Biggs, 1987)as well as the original Moving On II questionnaire based on Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ; Wilson et al., 1997).

These new additions to the questionnaire will enable the capture of better evidence on how students perceive their learning experiences throughout their undergraduate periods; students’ approaches in learning are likely to affect future habits of lifelong learning and are key indicators in assessing how well pharmacy education systems are working.

The SLEQ will allow world-wide comparisons and mapping of the learning experiences and the quality of learning of students enrolled in pharmacy programmes and is planned to be the largest study of its type to date. It is important for you and your country to be represented in this global survey. Data collected will provide key evidence for education advancement.

The “FIPEd-IPSF SLEQ” is an on-line survey (http://www.codegnet.org.uk/moII_2013/) in 7 different languages (Arabic, English, French, Japanese, Mandarin-Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish). The English version has been on-line since December 2012 and now a French version is available. So please, English and French speakers, give your voice about your learning experiences. Another 5 language versions are on the way to be on-line and the next article will provide more information.

Remember that your voice is the best evidence to inform the future of pharmacy. Tell us how you feel about your learning experiences and become a change-maker.

References: Biggs, J. B. 1987. Student Approaches to Learning and Studying, Hawthorn, Australian Council for Educational Research.

Biggs, J. B. 2001. Enhancing Learning: A Matter of Style or Approach? In: Sternberg, R. J. & Zhang, L. (eds.) Perspectives on Thinking, Learning, and Cognitive Styles. New York: Routledge.

Wilson, Keithia L., Lizzio, Alf & Ramsden, Paul 1997. The development, validation and application of the Course Experience Questionnaire. Studies in Higher Education, 22, 33-53.

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PEN Ed innovation

HCV Drug Discovery: Profit or Patients

by Ms. Dinar Azzahra, KEMAFAR UNPAD, Indonesia

HCV was firstly isolated from the serum of a person with non-A, non-B hepatitis in 1989. It is an RNA virus that belongs to the family flaviviridae, replicates in cytoplasm of hepatocytes, and transmitted primarily through infected blood exposure. According to WHO, about 3% of the world’s population has been infected with HCV and that there are more than 170 million chronic carriers who are at risk of developing liver cirrhosis and/or liver cancer. Therefore, the effective and efficient treatment for eradicating hepatitis virus is urgently needed.

The existing treatment available for Hepatitis C infection is ribavirin and interferon or combination of both. Ribavirin is a nucleoside analogue that is well absorbed orally and has broad antiviral activity against a variety of DNA and RNA viruses, whilst interferon is a cytokine, which help defending healthy cells against invading viruses. According to FDA, both of these treatments are difficult to tolerate and have significant adverse event profiles that limit treatment in many patients or result in substantial morbidity. The side effects of both drugs reported are fatigue, flu like symptom, mild anxiety, skin rash,

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depression, nausea, anaemia, and even thyroid dysfunction. This drug combination brought the rate of long term viral clearance approximately 50% in patient who have never before received treatment.

The advance in treatment was the addition of the HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitor TMC435 to standard pegylated interferon/ribavirin therapy increased the viral cure rate from 46% to 82%.

During the 47th International Liver Congress on 18-22nd April 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, it was reported that an interferon-free combination of two experimental pills shown 100% cure rate in a small clinical trial. As quoted from NY times, this trial raised hope among researcher that the disease will be curable without injected drug that has debilitating side effects that previous treatment had. Those two pills are GS-7977, manufactured by Gilead Science, and the other one is daclatasvir, manufactured by Bristol Myers Squibb.

Unfortunately, the realisation for combining this two pills encountered a lag due to Gilead’s unwillingness to collaborate. According to Bristol-Myers, Gilead wasn’t yet interested to collaborate. While Gilead spokesperson said they needed to evaluate and understand several months for a number of new data set at European Association for the Study of Liver (EASL) on other treatment to decide which path to take.

It is assumed that the reason Gilead doesn’t want to collaborate is because they spent $11 billion to ac-

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quire Pharmasset in 2012 for GS-7977. Thus, Gilead wants to obtain profit and return it to shareholders as soon as possible and by collaborating with Bristol, the profit margin would be decreased if it would be shared with Bristol. It makes sense that this leading pharmaceutical company wants to gain profit to cover the money spent. But should it be abandoning over 170 million people who is struggling to survive from Hepatitis C? Gilead seems to prefer to combine its GS-7977 with GS-5885, another drug it owns that belongs to the same NS5A inhibitor class as daclatasvir. If this happens, Bristol wouldn’t wait and move on to combine its daclasavir with INX189, which belongs to the same nucleoside, or “nuc” class of drugs as GS-7977. But still the efficacy of these two combinations need to be proven in clinical trials which means additional work, time, and resources to get the result that perhaps wouldn’t yield as effective as result of combination of GS-7977 and daclatasvir. Whereas, those people who suffer from Hepatitis C could not wait any longer for best treatment.

As seen in the explanation above, there is indeed a social contract between the pharmaceutical industry and the population. A social contract to provide and develop the effective treatment for people. Like stated in Michael Hirsch Journal, Pharmaceutical companies should find value in doing what is best for patients rather than their shareholders’ bank accounts. In this case, the value best for patient includes the willingness to collaborate with other company to work on trial and combine products together to gain a best treatment for lifethreatening infection like Hepatitis C instead of thinking about how to recoup money to shareholder. Nonetheless, we can’t abandon the fact that to

pharmaceutical companies, including Gilead, profit is essential breath for the fate of its continuing business. A company, like Gilead, spending outrageous amount of money to acquire control of a new drug and finally market the drug whilst it does not guarantee that the drugs acquired will survive the competition with other industries. According to survey of 10 pharmaceutical firms held by Tuft Center, the research and development of 68 randomly chosen new drugs and calculated an average cost of $802 million dollars in 2000. That comes to $1 billion dollars in 2011 based on the general inflation rate since 2000. It’s even more for Gilead, which spent $11 billion dollar to acquire Pharmasset. So perhaps Gilead’s unwillingness to collaborate due to split profit may somehow be justified. Their position is somehow difficult whether it should prioritize saving people or recoup the money to save the business? Now, they are in a position to decide whether they should prioritize saving people or recoup the money to save the business?

Further readings: - WHO. 2012. Hepatitis C. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/ factsheets/fs164/en/ - EASL. Hepatitis C New Drug Research And Liver Health http://www.hepatitiscnewdrugresearch.com/easl-2012-meeting-summary.html - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/health/ drug-collaboration-lags-on-hepatitis-treatment. html?ref=gileadsciencesinc&_r=2& - http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/ the-truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/

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Step On The Way

by Ms. Lina Salama, Contact Person of EPSF, Egypt Steps to the way of success, that’s the aim of the educational program Step On The Way. The program started 5 years ago by EPSF to provide the pharmaceutical students with the needed skills and knowledge through professionals from the top pharmaceutical companies, GSK, Pfizer,and Sanofi which were the event’s main sponsors as well as Amoun, Sandoz and Pharo Pharma as the supporting sponsors. To ensure the students can carry out a successful future career. The program is held every year in midyear vacation at four different regions in Egypt to make it reachable to all pharmacy students in the country.

Since the event targeted the students, EPSF gave the students the upper hand in deciding what are the topics they are mostly interested in. 10,000 student from 23 different university across Egypt took part in that through a survey. After carefully inspecting the surveys, the Continuous Education team led by the Chairperson Mr. Mohammed El-Kholay chose the highly-voted-on topics and for the first time, sci-

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entific topics were included in SOTW this year. These were the topics: Soft Skills Topics: 1-Leadership: ”Management is doing things right, Leadership is doing the right things” SOTW leaders learned all about doing the right things and about the basic leadership skills that prepare them to conquer the market.

2- Goal Setting: The first step in achieving a goal is setting it! This is why this it was an essential session in the success steps.

3-Communication Skills: in this session students learned about the skills and keys they’ll need for carrying out effective communication with different types of personalities.

4- Interviewing Skills: starting from the way the interviewee should dress till the way s/he would say goodbye after the end of the interview, all these important details were introduced to the students during this session.

5- Presentation Skills: How to build an interesting presentation, how to effectively deliver your message to the audience, how to use your body

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language correctly, these questions and more were answered during the presentation skills session.

keting on the local, national , and even global levels.

11- What about the 7?!: Based on Steven Covey’s 6- Negotiation Skills: a skill we use in our every- book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, this day-life, how to successfully convey your message session discussed the habits and how applying and patiently win the negotiation was what the stu- these habits can lead the students to a very successful life. dents learned during the session.

The Scientific Sessions - Community Pharmacy 7-Time Management: Since you can’t successfully achieve your goal without efficient time manage- Practice and OTC Problems: ment skills, the students learned about organizing The course discussed chronic diseases and OTC their time according to the tasks and abilities they problems which faced by pharmacists through have to get the best results. three principles: 9-Basics of Selling Skills: the students were in1 evidence based therapeutic plans; troduced to the interesting field of sales and business in the pharmaceutical field and learned what it 2 patient education; takes to be a successful salesman.

3 patient care plans and lifestyle modifica10-Basics of Marketing Skills: unlike regular tions. marketing of products, SOTW marketers can now The course was divided into six modules: market ideas! The topic taught the students all they need to know about the secrets of beneficial mar1st module, Cardiology: hypertension, angina, heart failure and arrythmia 2nd module,Resipratory System: Asthma, Bronchitis, and Cough.

3rd module,Endocrine System: Type1,Type 2, and gestational Diabetes Mellitus. Thyrpid Dysfuntion (Hypothyrodism and Hyperthyrodism) 4th module, Pregnancy and Lactation: Nausea, Vomiting, Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation.

5th module, Interactions: Top ten Drug-Drug,

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Drug-Disease, and Drug-Food interactions.

6th module, OTC Problems: Constipation, Diarrhea, Ulcers and Fever.

Before the official launching of the event in the midyear vacation, the local associations at different universities arranged for a session under the name “Career Pathway� in which students were introduced into the different available fields for pharmacists after graduation, Career Pathway was the first step in SOTW. Exams were finally over and the steps started, first in Minia University (26/1/2013-28/1/2013), followed by Ahram Canadian University (27/1/2013-29/1/2013), then Mansoura university (28/1/2013-1/2/2013) and finally Zagazig University (29/1/2013-31/1/2013).

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The grand finale of SOTW was the last step, the Business Pharmaceutical Platform, in the closing, 500 students who attended the course in the 4 different regions gathered at Cairo University to learn about the success stories of multinational and national pharmaceutical companies, how they started out as an idea, how did the idea turn into reality and how did the companies managed to continue thriving to the top. At the end of the day, the participants submitted their CVs to the EPSF and some of them will get the chance to attend summer training at the sponsoring companies.

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Call for Articles - Phuture 2013

‘Phuture’ (ISSN 2307-132X) is an educational/scientific publication of the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation (IPSF), which is published annualy during the IPSF World Congress.

For the next issue of this publication, IPSF would like to invite students, recent graduates, academics, and professionals to contribute their articles around the theme of:

If you wish to share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences in Phuture 2013, please contact phuture@ ipsf.org for article guideline. The deadline for submitting articles is on May 26th, 201300:00 (GMT+2).

In case you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact us on the above mentioned address.

Viva la Pharmacie!

Individualizing Pharmaceutical Care In recent years, the effect of individualized pharmaceutical care has become more noticeable than ever. The source of these differences may be as basic as sex or age. It may also be as complicated as genetic structure or socioeconomic conditions. As a result, delivering pharmaceutical care designed to cater to each individual patients has been an important issue in pharmaceutical practice. In the next issue of Phuture, we are hoping to answer some of these challenges regarding this topic and also facilitating the development of new ideas that can bring us closer to the ideal individualized pharmaceutical care.

Fellow IPSF’ers, delivering the best possible pharmaceutical care to patients is our responsibility and our future professional, so why don’t we start it now by developing and sharing our ideas in the Phuture.

Marouen Ben Guebila Chairperson of Pharmacy Education IPSF 2012-2013 Fahmi Fuady Phuture Coordinator IPSF 2012-2013

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International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation PO BOX 84200 2508 AE Den Haag The Netherlands Tel: +31 70 302 1992 Fax: +31 70 302 1999 Email: ipsf@ipsf.org Website: www.ipsf.org

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