Students from the Qatar University College of Pharmacy (QU-CPH) won first place for their poster presentation at the 7th Pharmaceutical Care Conference, held recently in Oman.
Fourth-year pharmacy students Farah Zahrah, Sara Abdulrahim, and Nour Isleem presented a poster entitled “Physical comorbidities and their management in patients with severe mental illness”.
The students were supervised by Dr Monica Zollezi, CPH assistant professor of pharmacy and director of the Structured Practical Experiences in Pharmacy programme.
The students presented their poster before a panel of judges comprising industry experts and international guest speakers, including European Association of Hospital Pharmacists president Joan Peppard, International Pharmaceutical Federation president Carmen Pena Lopez, and American Council for Pharmacy Education executive director Michael Rouse.
CPH dean Dr Mohammad Diab said: “We take pride in providing our students with a rich and varied learning experience. Our students are well equipped with the right tools and resources, and under strong mentorship of our faculty, they excel as students and as future graduates conducting research in the workplace, an important initiative of Qatar’s National Health Strategy.”
CPH assistant dean for student affairs Alla El-Awaisi congratulated the winning students.
“Our students excel in national and international venues and have done extremely well scooping top prize awards. This is a strong testament of the extremely high calibre of our students who are enrolled in our programme both at undergraduate and postgraduate level and our capable faculty supervising these students,” El-Awaisi said.
Supervisor Dr Zolezzi said: “The 7th Pharmaceutical Care Conference in Oman was the perfect opportunity to showcase the quality research undertaken at our college. Indeed, a great recognition to the students’ work over the past year.”
Student Abdulrahim said: “Being extremely organised and passionate about our research was the main reason for judges and audience admired our hard work, especially since we focused on physical comorbidities in psychiatric patients, an area that is usually underrepresented in the Arab world.”
“Our research has some very interesting findings that will hopefully attract health care professional attention towards caring for psychiatric patients with physical comorbidities more efficiently,” she added.