As an outstanding professional and a student, I am applying for a scholarship for the Doctor of Pharmacy, in order to realize my full potential and to join an academic school as a teaching staff after graduation. Being a hard working student with excellent academic credentials and a respectable performance throughout the Bachelor of Pharmacy degree program, and the Master in Diabetes Care and Education, with GPA 3.240 and MGPA 3.12, I expect to be the right candidate for the honorable Pharmacy Scholarship. Currently being enrolled in my Postgraduate studies at the University of Dundee, College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, I meticulously continue with my education in the program that aims at providing better clinical and patient oriented services. The comprehensive Diabetes Care and Education program at the University provides me with excellent opportunities of improving my awareness and skills in the diabetes mellitus management and to practice my extended roles in Clinical Pharmacy.
Holding a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Kuwait University, my sole aim is to build a firm knowledge base, and to acquire the necessary skills in the field of pharmacy to be able to play a vital role in improving my community's quality of life, by contributing to it as a highly competent specialist. My main academic experience includes Graduate Teaching Assistantship (Spring 2014) at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Kuwait University. However, my first award was given for a successful participation in high school Science Olympics in chemistry, following an award for an outstanding achievement in high school Physiology project.
As a talented healthcare expert, I believe that the pharmacists have to set their practice priorities and to develop their capacity to lead change in their organizations, as a preeminent responsibility. I am working in the field with an ultimate goal of improving the quality of services in our health care systems, as a member of the health care team, and promoting the mission of our pharmacy profession in the society. My never diminishing desire to study pharmacy as the science, which comprises more than the historical role of the pharmacist in preparing and dispensing medication, was completely shaped during my high school years, and, right at that time, I became convinced that this was a very attractive and an ever-changing field of science. Additionally, one of the especially intriguing aspects of this health profession was a wide spectrum of the work placement opportunities available.
My projects during the MSC program, basically included Training the Trainer Module, where I was expected to teach a course, based on the module assessments and program requirements. I taught a course on Pharmaceutical Care as a New Academic Discipline with a direct link to patient care, and designed the course Curriculum of Pharmaceutical Care, using mainly the problem-based and the learner centered approach. As part of the course, I delivered a number of lectures and workshops that have both a knowledge related goal and a skill related goal, in addition, I used multiple methods to assess the learning during the lectures and the workshops, according to the tested level of learning and the intellectual activity, which include the multiple choice questions, the case based discussion, and the mini-clinical evaluation exercise. Through the content I encountered in the Leadership Module, I was able to help myself in leading a high performance team of my collogues, who have common goals, for which we are willing to work and achieve, in order to improve the mission of our profession as a shared sense of purpose.
In the Research Module, I developed a study proposal for my dissertation in the MSC program, titled “A Clinical Audit on Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Risk as Part of Diabetes Mellitus Management in Kuwaiti Patients with Type 2 Diabetes”. Evaluating the current diabetes management in preventing the cardiovascular risk in patients having type 2 diabetes mellitus in Kuwait was one of the study aims. In addition, the study targeted at determining the degree, to which diabetes management practices, used to prevent cardiovascular risk in this population, conforms to evidence based practice guidelines. The study specifically identifies the differences in the prevention of certain cardiovascular diseases. To achieve the aim of the study, a clinical audit for management of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Kuwait was carried out, as it facilitates the monitoring of outcomes and lead to the improvement in quality of clinical practice.
As part of the module project, I implemented a medication consultation service for the discharged patients with diabetes mellitus, which is a new service that implies a change to the pharmacists practice in governmental hospitals. The project was conducted with a short term and a long term leadership objectives, addressing different levels of the health care system. As a leader, I inspired, motivated and led my colleagues to take the responsibility of counseling discharged patients with diabetes mellitus, who are poorly controlled, about their condition, its management and lifestyle modifications, through the counseling or educational sessions within a time frame of 6 weeks.
Apart from academia, I hold a number of professional certificates, such as Registration and Recording of Drug Consignments, Drug Manufacturing Practical Training Program, and Total Parental Nutrition Course, awarded from the Ministry of Health in Kuwait. I was also praised for a successful organization, as a member of the organizing committee, of the Second Kuwait International Pharmaceutical Conference, and an active participation in the Third, and the Forth Conference in 2013, and was honored for the outstanding academic performance and the distinction in Pharmacokinetics course. Besides, I attended the activities of The Future of Diabetes Care and Education Discovery Course at the Dasman Diabetes Institute in 2011, the London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF), and prepared a presentation on my wining poster as part of the activity in London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF).
As a certified pharmacist, I joined the Ministry of Health and, as part of my training program for 1 year, I started my work in Al-Jahra polyclinic, later on shifting to al-Jahra hospital. The particular is a governmental non-specialized hospital that has 6 different pharmacies, including the central pharmacy, causality pharmacy, and the out-patient pharmacies (OPD) with the surgical pharmacy, medical pharmacy, and maternity pharmacy. After that I had the chance to join the Pharmacy Department in al Sabah medical area to work in a number of specialized hospitals, offering continuing education programs. Since I took the regular responsibilities of the pharmacist, I believed in having the duty to improve the patients’ quality of life, by achieving a better management of their conditions, as an active member of the health care team.
During the trainee program in the polyclinics, I volunteered alone to work on a handbook, by summarizing the FDA pregnancy categories and lactation implications for all the medicines available in this polyclinics, according to three main references: Kuwait Drug Index, British National Formulary, and Drug Information Handbook. When I started my work as a qualified pharmacist, I tried to practice all my regular roles, as well as my extended roles, and I firmly believed in our crucial role of providing the best care possible for patients, and optimizing their outcomes through the recognition and management of different drug interactions.
During my early career, I had the chance to give lectures to medical nursing staff, physicians, and other interested groups of specialists on matters pertaining to pharmacy, as well as to develop and to actively participate in clinical pharmaceutical researches. In addition, a number of lectures were delivered to explore and communicate the evidence based management of important interactions that affect the quality of our services and the patients’ health. My goal was to highlight the pharmacist’s role in providing a direct patient care, and generating, disseminating and applying new knowledge, with regard to the therapeutic use of medications, to the third party health care providers.
Throughout my distinctive involvement with the science, I have worked in different pharmacies, in which I became seriously involved in the entire routine process, including interpreting, preparing, dispensing the prescriptions for in-patients and out-patients, and documenting them accurately. During my work in the outpatient pharmacies, there were more responsibilities and roles to apply, such as counseling the patients and communicating efficiently with them about their drug therapies and management of diseases in order to be able to identify, resolve and prevent medication related problems. Some of the hospitals have units with specialized services, including a medical store, manufacturing unit, total parental nutrition unit, quality control unit, and drug information center. I enjoyed the work in all these units immensely, since I was involved in every process of their expert services, for example, I was responsible for compounding some preparations and preparing the ward stock in the manufacturing unit, and in the quality control unit, I was responsible for testing and assuring the quality of the available drugs, according to specific criteria.
My professional experience lasts for only 2 years, characterized by a diligent and a non-stop work, and I can proudly admit that my experiences have shaped my thinking and behavior in many significant ways. The most important is that I had the chance to work in different pharmacies, as part of my trainee and rotation program, and acquire specifics of many governmental hospitals. Moreover, I had the unique opportunity to gain an understanding of the issues that we are facing as pharmacists, and that affect us most in our daily practice. Through my work experience in practicing some of the pharmacist roles in the Ministry of Health, I realized that there are a lot of obstacles that make our work and achievement of goals, as pharmacists, very intricate in our health care systems. Unfortunately, the protocols in most of our hospitals today ignore the pharmacist roles and abilities, which makes it rather complicated to apply what we had learned and trained on, during our working and academic years.
As part of the multidisciplinary care team, the pharmacists are often required to be able to recognize clinically significant drug interactions, and to professionally communicate the management plan to the patient and the involved healthcare professionals. In order to achieve these objectives, I constantly tried to educate my colleagues and other health care team members, and update them through a distribution of clinical reports on the latest published literature reviews, and to plan the routine meetings to communicate and discuss the feedback on the clinical reports. As a member of the health care team, I am determined to continue to demonstrate that pharmacists have the knowledge, required skills and abilities that give them a crucial role in educating the patients with diabetes mellitus about their illness, its complications and management. I have learned a great deal about leadership and change management.
I have always wanted all things to be better in my personal, professional life and work. From the beginning of my career, I have tried to tackle the things that negatively affect me, and passionately tried to change them. Sometimes, I have been successful, sometimes not; sometimes my contributions were appreciated, but sometimes not at all. Fortunately, I had learned that in order to have our ideas realized and our mission accomplished, as professionals, we have to lead the change personally, professionally and organizationally, though it is not a simple and straightforward process. Therefore, I decided to change and pursue a career in academia with a clinical interest and research emphasis, such as the Doctor of Pharmacy, and am certain that with such a versatile degree as the Doctor of Pharmacy, the possibilities for my future career are promising. Moreover, I hope that I can participate in the improvement of the learning process together with the professional academic staff in my academic department/ school.
If I were awarded the Doctor of Pharmacy scholarship, it would significantly help me to accomplish my direct career goals of becoming a brilliant professional in the health discipline. The program’s high profile would definitely allow me to personally contribute to the improvement of the human health. As far as my professional goals are concerned, my short term goal is to earn the Doctoral degree and to become a well-known specialist in the pharmacy research and education. To advance my pharmacist career to a degree commensurate with my skills, my long-term goal is to teach and research biomedical pharmacy in my country of origin.
Thank you for consideration.
