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Pharmacy Residency Podcast


Feb 16, 2018

Meryam Gharbi APhA-ASP National Member-at-large interviews final-year student pharmacist Mudit Verma about the strategic implications of his myriad global experiences. Having trekked to six countries in his pharmacy school career for various enterprises, Mudit hones in on traversing multiple tiers of leadership roles throughout pharmacy school. Mudit’s self-discovery sheds light on introspective strategies that help foster perseverance among student leaders. Ultimately, Mudit uses pragmatic tools to build upon his strengths which enables him to mitigate burnout when faced with adversity. Inspired by non-traditional ideation, Mudit delivers cutting-edge insights into self-care and personal wellness as necessary attributes for progressive pharmacy leaders.

Interested in learning more about Mudit's international experiences? Check out his two most highly acclaimed blog posts:Broadening My Pharmacy Horizons in Australia 

https://blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu/insidesop/2018/01/12/broadening-my-pharmacy-horizons-in-australia/


Understanding the Importance of Cultural Competence in Global Health

 https://elm.umaryland.edu/understanding-the-importance-of-cultural-competence-in-global-health/

Full Transcript:

Ep_46_Traversing_Diverse_Leadership_Roles_with_Mudit_Verma_of_the_University_of_Maryland_School_of_Pharmacy

Welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast with your host Tony Guerra. The Pharmacy Leaders Podcast is a member of the Pharmacy Podcast Network with interviews and advice on building your professional network, brand and a purposeful second income from students, residents and innovative professionals.

Welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast. I have a phenomenal episode today, I'm super excited because this is a student-to-student episode and I have one student interviewing another. And I welcome those kinds of submissions if it's a high quality audio and certainly contact me first and I'll mentor you through it but what I really want is for the students to learn how to do this recording and to create these kinds of audio blog posts. Because there are so many stories that we're missing because they're just not getting out there. So I built the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast platform for these kinds of phenomenal students to tell their stories. And I'm so excited that this is my alma mater the University of Maryland a Greyer Griffith who has been with alumni relations has really done a great job of keeping up with me and the class certainly of 1997 in our twentieth year reunion. So I'm excited to give back a little bit by spreading the word about an alma mater that I am extremely proud of the University of Maryland and now you can hear these two students and how they created the episode. And do get in touch with me if you are interested in creating an episode with this fellow student or a professor in your college.

My name is Miriam Garvey and I'm a final year student pharmacist at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and today I am absolutely thrilled to interview my very good friend and colleague Mudit Verma.

Yeah, hello everyone, it's a great pleasure to be here on Pharmacy Podcast.

It's great to have you.

So Mudit, you are also a final-year student pharmacist at the University of Maryland and you're getting ready to graduate soon. The super exciting, how do you feel about almost being done?

Yeah I definitely, you know, I can't believe time is going by. I'm super thrilled to graduate soon and I feel like the finish line is just so close yet so far. I mean time is just moving so paradoxically. The past four years have been such a roller coaster and I have a lot of stories to tell.

Well, we're very excited to hear about your journey. So Mudit, everyone's leadership journey is a little different. Tell me a bit about how you got to where you are today.

Of course, so before pharmacy school I got a bachelor's in psychology and a leadership studies minor from the University of Maryland College Park. And over there I was involved in a whole lot of extracurriculars and so naturally I thought I would do the same in pharmacy school. And so back then when I was researching what schools to apply to I noticed that Maryland was just all over the internet and there was a lot of coverage of the student organizations. And so that and the in-state tuition motivated me to apply to the University of Maryland, early decision and I hit the ground running starting my P-1 year. I held two executive board positions both within our class which is the class of 2018. I was president at that time and I also held the position of co-historian in our CPNP chapter which is the College of Psychiatric and Neurological Pharmacists. So that was quite a bit to take on, I felt like as a first-year student and the experience really taught me how to manage my time. I was really meticulous using electronic sticky notes, actual sticky notes, my normal go-to planner is Google Calendar and I mean I just did whatever I could.

Wow, those sound like a lot of useful time management tools. I know I personally use the David Allen method but I think time management is a very personal thing.

Gotcha that's really cool. I'll definitely look into this method. So I found that the general responsibilities of being on the Executive Board, I found them to be very regimented. There were several logistical tasks to either complete or delegate and so, first as serving as class president I recall helping to develop and oversee action items for our e-board. These would create fundraising events such as a talent show, social events such as a secret snowflake gifted exchange in the winter time, newsletters with exam reminders, course registration reminders. The whole thing was great but it did feel like school all over again and that I was achieving multiple objectives for a therapeutics lecture almost. And as co-historian for our CPNP chapter I would manage the group social media, take photos at outreach events and post them and help arrange speaker events and so that was essentially my P-1 year leadership. And while it was fulfilling it did feel like a whole lot more school. It was eventually something I felt like I just had to do which is a little bit weird because technically I did always have a choice but that pressure did make sense because our school is very supportive, very proactive with showing student pharmacists opportunities towards residencies. And residencies as certain postgraduate programs they prefer to see candidates with ample leadership positions. They like to see students that are very involved and so I did cherish my P-1 leadership experiences, you know, and even though it felt like very rigid and I was checking several boxes. I certainly grew knowing that traditional pharmacist careers and just about any industry it's crucial to be good at multitasking, task delegation and be meticulous with your time management.

Those are absolutely important skills.

Right and so that being said I felt like as P-1 year ended I felt like I wanted to be more creative and innovative and to be creative in the scope of pharmacy school student group. I felt like that was first dependent on fulfilling a variety of housekeeping responsibilities and, you know, I wanted to branch out of those confines and break through the walls to pursue broader goals that were more creative and perhaps more expressive.

That's really cool Mudit. It sounds like you've learned a lot about yourself during your P-1 year. So I'm wondering what came next.

Right, so the summer after my P-1 year I decided to step out of my comfort zone and travel to Argentina with one other classmate to the IPSF Pan American Regional Symposium. IPSF is as we both know the International Pharmaceutical Student Federation for anyone that's listening that's not familiar. And so like you Miriam I got the opportunity to represent all of APHA ASP as a voting delegate at that symposium and it was a great opportunity to learn about the Argentinean pharmacy education system, how pharmacist get licensed in Argentina and, you know, it was such a festive environment, a great networking experience and I also brushed up on my Spanish since pretty much all of the events throughout the symposium were primarily facilitated in Spanish.

Okay, that is super cool. So was it challenging for you to network and engage with student pharmacists from predominantly Spanish speaking countries?

Yeah I would say it was tough at times but the attendees that spoke both English and Spanish and perhaps other languages they were very ready and available to translate whenever necessary. They were definitely helpful and I guess necessary for the symposium to run smoothly and so that motivated me to actually take up language learning as a hobby.

Gotcha, that totally makes sense. I think hobbies are a valuable way for student pharmacists to maintain balance in the busy lives we have.

Yeah, I'd say balance is definitely essential to staying active and motivated and energetic in any capacity of leadership. And so P-2 year was when I got the opportunity to branch out even further. I took on a position that was a sort of ambassador's role to the School of Pharmacy and this position was called president's fellow. So it was a leadership role that came with a scholarship and the president's fellows are an interdisciplinary cohort and we all would report to the university president.

So you got to work with the president Jay Perman from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Yes our university president. President Perman has been phenomenal in capitalizing on student input and so with our cohort there were students from each of the other six professional schools which were dentistry, nursing, social work, medicine and law. And so our project was to write and present a twenty page white paper in which we would outline formal recommendations to the University and our particular topic for that year was cultural competence. And so there are different topics each year. This year is global literacy, last year it was entrepreneurship, the year before which was the school year of 2015/16, my year was cultural competence. And so when we finally presented our paper to the president and his colleagues it was such an epic experience because his colleagues included deans from the other schools and professors that I've never even met before. It was phenomenal.

That sounds like such an incredible experience Mudit. Presenting in front of such an esteemed audience is a tremendous accomplishment. I bet several student pharmacists would love that opportunity. So what made you choose cultural competence in particular?

Right, so I became interested in cultural competence because I felt that it was a global topic since I just love to learn about new cultures and travel. It was a global topic that tied my passion of social justice and my interest in public health. Yeah this really came up when we were learning about how culturally competent health care can sort of minimize healthcare disparities by helping vulnerable patient groups access quality healthcare. I think that's a big topic that's relevant today and, you know, having diverse patient groups can really sort of empower a student pharmacist to continue providing equitable access. And so we learned about a whole lot of like stories where patients that were not fluent in English, they had trouble getting access to resources that would provide appropriate medical translation. And this really struck a chord with me because I noticed that it can often be an arduous process to get the appropriate medical translation services on some of my hospital rotations and regarding my community experiences it can be a very fleeting environment to the extent where patients may not be able to receive appropriate medical translation since the environment is just so fast-paced. And so pursuing this project working, with these students and collectively writing a paper that was, it was twenty pages long but because there were about, I want to say seven or eight of us fellows if I remember correctly. We actually had to sort of trim down a lot of content such that our ideas could fit in those twenty pages. And so engaging with cultural competence helped me address communication barriers within school on rotations in patient care context and with that I personally perceive communication as a very important aspect to effective leadership.

Excellent, you've clearly done a lot Mudit. You must have created a robust network of mentors throughout your leadership experiences, what is the best career advice you have ever been given?

Yeah that's definitely an important question and I've certainly received a lot of career advice because I am very privileged to be with a network of several mentors from all walks of life. And so taking a step back I feel like the best type of career advice that anyone can give me is advice that is realistic. And so I've had multiple instances throughout school, particularly pharmacy school since it's a very hard competitive program. Where I felt burnt out from getting sort of prep talks that were very optimistic and felt akin to a self-help book at times and so at best these moments of inspiration were very temporary but surely enough I would burn out again. And so as a result I've really come to appreciate advice that aligns with what I see as realistic and feasible. And so multiple people have given me advice that I found to be realistic and what's interesting is I felt like they weren't necessarily trying to inspire me, they were they were just keeping it real. So my favorite articulation of the sort of advice is that a career is something you stumble upon and so this advice is sort of this conciliatory realness and I really resonate with that because I'm always persistent in trying to define my passion and hopefully focus on a specific career goal but my journey has been ongoing, it's been arduous, I'm not so sure that there's a true end in sight for career planning but that may not be such a bad thing.

Right, because well we both know that learning is a lifelong journey, especially when you're learning about yourself.

Yeah, exactly and so today I'm really enjoying my fourth year Appy rotations because I see this fourth year as engaging in sort of an experiential trial-and-error such that I will eventually stumble upon the right career for me.

That is very pertinent advice. You mentioned burnout which is a very real situation I have been there myself. What do you do on a continuous basis to either prevent burnout or mitigate the effects of burnout such that you can stay on top of all your responsibilities?

Yeah that's definitely a burning question, no pun intended. I'd say the first step to tackling burnout is getting to know yourself. That can be a tedious endeavor in pharmacy school and I think it requires a lot of trial and error as a student. Exams in particular were the most challenging aspect of my first three years and they were the primary stressors of me burning out. I mean just the core commitment of having to take exams, get good enough grades there was just so many of them. And so I had to pretty much come up with the best time management skills and study techniques that were sort of catered to my personal success and so with that I had to become more self aware and one way I do that is that I regularly write out my reflections about how certain study techniques work, how early I should wake up for our exams, they all took place somewhere between like 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.. I personally, I'm not a fan of morning exams because waking up in the morning I'd take a while to kind of to function to the best of my ability and so I would document just every little technique I would try, sometimes I would wake up with just enough time to kind of get ready in the morning and head out to get to the pharmacy building for my exam. And I've tried also waking up incredibly early to spend an hour sort of reviewing and rehearsing the exam material. So I actually used the this app on my phone called Google Keep that's KEEP to just jot everything and anything down that's going on. And the goal here is to create a personalized plan to find the best management strategies, to find out how I can best engage in self-care and I also want to say that students that feel burnt out should acknowledge that feeling head-on because, you know, facing it and not denying it is sort of the best way in my opinion to become self-aware. I don't want students to feel like should they become burnt out that it's sort of a game over type of situation and from there after acknowledging the feeling of burnt out I would advise that students determine what steps they can take to gradually restore their energy and passion and drive to persevere.

I definitely agree with that approach Mudit. I have one last question for you and it is my favorite question to ask fellow student pharmacists and that is what inspires you?

Alright, that's a phenomenal question and perhaps a bit difficult but I think I'm inspired by leaders who address issues that maybe offer silenced or stigmatized. So in no particular order I like, I to this day or in this current time I'm inspired by leaders who shed light on topics such as mental health and mental health advocacy, patient groups or fellow professionals or whoever dealing with either themselves with mental illness or their family members. This passion sort of stemmed from my undergraduate studies since I majored in psychology. I like, I'm inspired by leaders who shed light on issues that that are again are stigmatized and I think mental health is a big one for today. I'm also inspired by leaders sort of on a similar theme that may inspire conversations that are more centered around self-care. Especially in pharmacy school a lot of us are very passionate and driven to get out there to volunteer all on top of studying to help each other out but sometimes this is an environment where a lot of us experience burnout and sometimes to agree to a degree that has never been felt before. And so I'm inspired by student leaders that are willing to admit that they or their peers may be struggling in school sort of despite maybe how many leadership roles they may be taking on and, you know, just talking that through and not sort of getting on each other's case about sort of exploring our interests. And to really specify what I'm talking about I like student leaders who don't stigmatize what some may perceive as mediocrity and what I mean is it already takes a baseline level of excellence and competence to get into pharmacy school and as we know many of our classmates have family commitments, life commitments. A lot of our classmates are just in positions that do not enable them to participate in extracurriculars at least the same way that I am able to. And so I'm inspired by leaders who are able to acknowledge that and while they themselves are inspired to go above and beyond they don't necessarily expect the exact same level among their peers. So ultimately I want students know that it's okay to focus on your priorities that you choose especially self-care. I think that is so important in sustaining your energy and your motivation to sort of mitigate any feelings of being burnt out and so with that I'm inspired by leaders who tell those stories that are reluctantly told and leaders who value all aspects of health, wellness, all of these things as a shared experience.

Wonderful Mudit, it has definitely been a pleasure speaking with you today on Pharmacy Podcast. I wish you the best of luck on these last few months of school. I know you're going to be an amazing pharmacist one day.

Thank you so much Miriam. That means a lot. I think these are very exciting times and I can't wait to see what the future holds.

Support for this episode comes from the audio book Memorizing Pharmacology. A relaxed approach with over 9,000 sales in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, it's the go-to resource to ease the pharmacology challenge. Available on Audible, iTunes and amazon.com in print eBook and audio book. Thank you for listening to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast with your host Tony Guerra. Be sure to share the show with the hash tag hash pharmacy leaders.