December 7, 2021
By Taylor Brown
AUBURN, Alabama – The Harrison School of Pharmacy team of Lauren Campisi and Yumi Oh, both members of the HSOP Class of 2022, earned the national title at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Clinical Skills Competition on Dec. 5. The pair claimed Auburn’s first-ever win in the competition, winning out of 140 pharmacy schools that competed.
The ASHP Competition is an interactive, team-based analysis of clinical scenarios for hospital and health-system pharmacists. It provides pharmacy students the opportunity to enhance their skills in collaborative practice with physicians in providing direct patient care.
“We were given a patient case where the patient could have presented any number of medical issues that we needed to identify and treat medically,” said Lauren Campisi.Students were given two hours to open their case, read over it thoroughly and work through their therapeutic plan for their patient.
“Our patient was an older adult with multiple comorbid health conditions but a primary concern of an acute ischemic stroke,” said Campisi, “We had to prioritize our concerns and handwrite our plan with therapeutic goals and monitoring parameters for his multiple conditions, including the acute management of his stroke.”
Leading up to the competition, the duo prepared through reading the guidelines, studying their notes and using old keys from previous years to help guide them through their approach on the case.
“The patient could have had an acute illness, so when we opened the case at 7 a.m. on Saturday we were so excited about the problem of stroke because we had such great foundational knowledge from the curriculum with Dr. Jessica Starr,” said Campisi.
Their curricular experience at HSOP, along with their experience in the Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience, also assisted them in their preparation for the competition.
“Throughout the Practice Ready Curriculum, we had multiple opportunities to develop an assessment and plan through class assignments and Performance Based Assessments,” said Oh. “I believe that this, along with the didactic portion of the curriculum, helped us tremendously when competing in the clinical skills competition.”
The finalists were announced Saturday night, where Oh and Campisi found out they made the top 11 and would compete in Sunday’s final round.“Sunday morning, Yumi came over to my house and we started prepping and going through every inch of our case to look for mistakes we had made and then started thinking through our rationale and explanation for any question they could ask us,” said Campisi.
After more than three hours of prepping, the two were ready to compete in the final round that consisted of a two minute case presentation where they summarized the patient's immediate care needs. The remaining time, the three judges asked several follow-up questions about their care plan and why they made those choices.
“After our 10 minutes with the judges was up, we sat in disbelief because we had prepared for every question they asked, we knew we nailed it,” said Campisi.
The competition was held virtually this year as part of the ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting. With it being virtual, they could either be on Zoom separately or work together.
“We chose to be in person together for easier communication, uploading of the case and the emotional support,” said Campisi. “For the final round, we chose to be together, which worked out because we could easily augment each other’s comments to the judges and jump in when needed.”
Approximately an hour after Sunday’s final round, the two got the news in an email that they had beat out the other finalists from across the country to win HSOP’s first national title in the competition.
“It is still absolutely so surreal that we won the competition,” said Oh. “We were so happy to have accomplished this goal but also to represent HSOP and Auburn by making history as the first team to ever win.”
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Auburn University’s Harrison School of Pharmacy is ranked among the top 25 percent of all pharmacy schools in the United States, according to U.S. News & World Report. Fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), the School offers doctoral degrees in pharmacy (Pharm.D.) and pharmaceutical sciences (Ph.D.) while also offering a master’s in pharmaceutical sciences. The School's commitment to world-class scholarship and interdisciplinary research speaks to Auburn's overarching Carnegie R1 designation that places Auburn among the top 100 doctoral research universities in the nation. For more information about the School, please call 334.844.8348 or visit http://pharmacy.auburn.edu.