Clinical Research Challenge

PharmD Student Team Advances to Final Round of American College of Clinical Pharmacy Competition

After several months literature reviews, written exams and crafting a clinical research proposal, a team of UHCOP Pharm.D. students has advanced with 19 other teams nationwide into the third and final round of American College of Clinical Pharmacy's 2017 ACCP Clinical Research Challenge.

Team members Diane Dreucean, Erica Morales and Sarah Theriault qualified to represent UHCOP at the national level after winning the local competition presented by the Student College of Clinical Pharmacy, the college's official student chapter of ACCP. In the local competition, teams were given five days to review and study a research publication before taking a 50-question multiple choice test on the publication with a time limit of one hour and 15 minutes.

In the first round of the national competition, the 82 teams from pharmacy schools across the U.S. were presented with an online journal examination based on literature from a recently published study or a landmark clinical trial. The top 40 teams advancing to the second round were given a general research question from which they were required to prepare a written proposal for the selected topic or disease state.

In the third and final round, the top 20 teams were tasked with delivering a more in-depth analysis of the initial proposal from the previous round. The teams achieving a rating in the top third of submissions will be forwarded to the Competition Oversight Panel for final review and consideration for the top four awards to be announced in June.

Through reaching round three of the competition, the trio of second-year Pharm.D. students are enjoying the process because it’s giving them an even more hands-on learning experience outside of the classroom.

"I have a lot of fun doing these types of competitions," Dreucean said. "It’s not necessarily about winning, but just getting the experience doing this type of research that will prepare me for rotations and residency."

While going through each round, the students have leaned on much of the education they’ve received their UHCOP Pharm.D. education.

"A lot of what we’ve learned about literature review and statistical analysis before we did the local competition was from our old class notes, so we went back and studied up on that material," team leader Morales said.