Meetings and Conferences

World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

FIP Young Pharmacists Group launches new award for professional innovation

The FIP Young Pharmacists Group launched its award for professional innovation during the first forum of its members at the Singapore congress on 5 September. The aim of the award is to promote innovation in the profession of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences through creative projects by young pharmacists.

The challenge of the award, according to the FIP-YPG is “to address a specific issue or problem that may be improved through an innovative intervention by pharmacists. This issue may be related to any field of the profession or of the pharmaceutical sciences and its resolution or improvments should directly or indirectly have a positive impact on the community.”

The award consist of free registration to the FIP annual congress, together with airfare and accommodation, and 1,000 euros to assist the winner in starting the implementation of the project. the winner will present findings from the project during the FIP congress.

Entry is open to young pharmacists who are members of the FIP-YPG. Submissions will be accepted from 1 November 2001 to 15 June 2002 and should consist of:

Identification of the issue, its impact on the community and the potential consequences of the proposed project’s implementation
Evidence of the impact of the issue on the community and the research performed to obtain the evidence
Details of the project: the idea and the proposed intervention
Data that demonstrate the feasibility of the project with details of the resources required
Visual representation of the project in the form of a poster that suitably presents the project, its background and its feasibility

The FIP-YPG intends to present the first award at the Nice congress in 2002.

Further information about the FIP-YPG award can be obtained from FIP-YPG, PO Box 84200, 2508 AE The Hague, The Netherlands (e-mail ypg@fip.org).

First business meeting

The first FIP-YPG business meeting was on 3 September 2001 in Singapore. There were 18 young pharmacists present from 15 countries: Australia, Denmark, Germany, China (Hong Kong), Iran, Korea, Malta, the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The FIP Bureau was represented by Mike Rouse, and the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation by Rodrigo Oliveira.

The aim of the meeting was to describe, discuss and adopt what had been accomplished during the previous year, current and future projects and other issues as they came up. Gonçalo Sousa Pinto (Portugal) was appointed chairman of the meeting. During the previous year, Mr Pinto and Sally Arnison (UK) made up the ad-hoc committee that had co-ordinated the FIP-YPG and moved it forward. They were helped specifically by a number of people, whom they publicly thanked, and relied on an e-group discussion among 75 young pharmacists to generate ideas and decide on relevant coursees of action.

Projects

Two new internet projects of interest to young pharmacists were discussed. These included the international database on professional registration requirements (which aims to collect together the basic information about the requirements for registering as a pharmacist in another country), and the international database on pharmacy-related postgraduate and continuing education courses (which will collate data on different courses worldwide in a searchable form on the internet).

There was also an animated discussion which led to a decision to have two main roles for the FIP-YPG website: a content role for the dissemination of information, and a community role for the interaction of young pharmacists.

The meeting mandated the incoming steering committee to increase membership of young pharmacists (under 35 years of age or within five years of graduation) in FIP and to focus on bringing higher numbers of young pharmacists to future FIP congresses. This led to a debate on the topic selection for the second FIP-YPG forum in Nice. Suggestions included “Professional career development” and “Starting your own company”, but the possibility of getting a more representative opinion through e-group discussion resulted in the decision being postponed. Although still rather abstract, an emerging prominent concept was the desire for better leadership training and experience for young pharmacists.

Steering committee

The following steering committee for 2001–02 was unanimously elected: chairman, Sally Arnison, of Great Britain; public relations officer, Danielle Zammit, of Malta (currently living in the United States); project co-ordinator, Ema Paulino, of Portugal.