Learn about the School of Pharmacy’s more than half a dozen partnerships across the globe in the latest issue of “CATALYST.”
Photo: Left to right, student Holly Verbrugge, professor Audrey Hamachila, professor Sody Munsaka, student Vraj Patel, and student Christine Rojas during the UMSOP students’ PharmD rotation in Zambia.
When Vraj Patel, a fourth-year PharmD student at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP), traveled to Zambia, Africa, he spent four weeks at the University Teaching Hospital getting hands-on experience in a health care system that, in many ways, was quite unlike his own.
But what wasn’t different was the care and compassion needed to gain patients’ trust when treating them.
In Zambia, a lot of medications are packaged in blister packs, Patel said. Some of the biggest outliers are HIV medications, which are packaged in pill bottles. And pill bottles audibly rattle in pockets and bags.
“There’s a stigma around hearing a pill rattling in someone’s bag. And so, when patients would come in, they would ask you to really pack in cotton rounds and pieces of newspaper, so … if they were walking on the street, or if they had family members that live with them, they wouldn’t hear those pills rattling,” Patel said.
“That served as a reminder that even in Zambia and in America, there is going to be stigma around any disease state, and we as pharmacists are trusted to keep that confidentiality and hold our patients’ trust.”
Patel’s international rotation last spring allowed him to explore multiple areas in pharmacy including inpatient cardiology and infectious diseases outpatient management of pediatric cancers and HIV. That rotation in Zambia is just one of more than half a dozen partnerships UMSOP has across the globe.
The school has partnered with universities in multiple parts of the world, including Australia, Egypt, Italy, South Korea, Thailand, and Zambia. And it’s only growing.
“Hardly a month goes by without the Experiential Learning Program [ELP] office receiving a new inquiry from a university abroad, eager to establish a formal agreement or explore opportunities for collaboration and exchange,” said Mojdeh S. Heavner, PharmD, BCCCP, FCCM, FCCP, assistant dean for experiential learning and professor in UMSOP’s Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research (PSHOR). UMSOP has an established international presence, and institutions are eager to work with the school, she added.
Read more about UMSOP's global programs in "CATALYST."
The latest issue of "CATALYST" magazine highlights the School of Medicine's impact building safer health systems in The Gambia; the School of Nursing's work with HIV and mental health in Nigeria; a Maryland Carey Law fellowship honoring the legacy of graduate Eric Garvin; UMB's health care pipeline for students from underserved rural areas such as the Eastern Shore; UMB's innovative policing; Five Questions with VP for Research Patrick O'Shea; and much more.