Mar 16, 2018
A live APhA 2018 interview with James Cong, a University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate, APhA-ASP Region 6 Member-at-large and UT-APhA-ASP President. He is also part of the Capital Area Pharmacy Association, Student Pharmacist Liaison SCCP and Clinical Exposure Chair.
Full Transcript:
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 alright welcome to Nashville and welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast I'm here with James Kong who is the president of his APHA ASP chapter at the University of Texas Austin and I had a number of questions that I wanted to ask him about his leadership road so I'll hand it over to him and first say you know everybody's leadership road is a little bit different tell us a little bit about yours thank you Tony absolutely wonderful pleasure to be on this podcast I've listened to it for so long my leadership role is actually not one that still was very natural coming through my undergraduate studies and even back in high school I was not necessarily a born leader where I never really strove to excel what I was thinking but coming into pharmacy school actually it's cliché because the organization I am involved in now but it was a PHAs P that got me involved it was simply through going to my first conference and seeing the amazing initiatives that student pharmacists are taking all over the nation and I went to a regional conference and it was just blown away by how much we can have a direct impact on patient care so I wanted to bring that back to my chapter and that really pushed me to do more and not just put on events but make sure that everything we do really impacts the patients that we're trying to reach out to him so tell me a little bit about how you get involved with an organization like APHA ASB I know you said that you got involved because of a conference but walk me through it so you start on day one at pharmacy school when do you actually become a member and then when do you how do you rise to the leadership position because I know a lot of people first for residences and things like that want leadership positions but they don't know what are the step by step to get the ones especially the top leadership positions so I do think that this has to do with the culture and the individual organizations here at my school the way that I tried to set the culture of my chapter is that everyone should be a leader everyone can impress that potential so when we have our events especially at the beginning a year everything is open to every single student in the college whether regardless it would pay dues to our chapter or not and then even later on it the vast majority of our events are open but to get started it's really just about getting involved you are you would be really surprised as a new leader just how much passion your own student pharmacist having how much your peers can really accelerate your own growth just by talking to them and so our chapter what we see is that the people who are just very involved we don't have not everyone has a title leadership positions but we have so many people running their own initiatives because that's what our chapter really tries to promote and then we helped anybody that has any idea that they're passionate about to make that dream a reality so try to get in contact with the people who are in the leadership positions at your school I'm sure that you know these are all student pharmacists they all want this same goal is they have the same passion same dreams it doesn't matter that whether or not you do have the leadership position currently I'm sure they want to help you get there so UT-Austin is one of the biggest colleges in the country and one of the best pharmacy schools in the country but tell me a little bit about how you're able to make the campus a little bit smaller because it's a giant campus giant group of people but how does it become small or once you get into leadership positions and get into leadership groups so it's funny yeah UT Austin is enormous the campus itself I actually did my undergraduate there and it was humongous but coming in to pharmacy school actually feels a lot smaller just because we're always in the same area every day but once you become leaders and really involved in your college and the organization's everything becomes smaller because you're surrounded by this passion of people who show up they show up to the events they show up to meetings they show up to planning sessions and then you really get to know the people who really care about what they're doing and wants to create innovation create change and so you kind of become part of that family and then as a family expands you start reaching to other organizations that are not necessarily just a pharmacy organizations that you can work with and network with and also are passionate that are just tangential to what you're doing such as people who groups out care about drug related programs and legislature and other like three pharmacy groups and things like that you'll see the same leaders over and over and it really becomes a good friendship so tell me a little bit about the advantages of being in a bigger school I went to a college the University of Maryland itself is a pretty big school but the medical campus is actually 25 minutes north I was just on a graduate campus with 5,000 students tell me a little bit about the advantages about being at UT Austin and what made you stay so a lot of times students will go from one school to another just to do something different but what made you stay at UT Austin so yeah for those that don't know UT-Austin we have about 50,000 students there across everything graduated undergrad and so what really made me stay is the variety of opportunities there you know there's no limit when you're at a big school and there's no limit at a small school either but when a big school is just like the opportunities they just feel a hand reach away you just have to reach out and search for something and you get it or you find that the opportunity to pursue whatever you're passionate about so that's really why I stayed at the University of Texas I also felt that the college was supportive and then we is also had a reputation as a really amazing school so that's why I really wanted to stay there and being at the large school I feel like it got me used to size and so when I went to the regional level in the national level I wasn't afraid I was more prepared to search for say like a regional position and currently the region six member at large for APHA is P also and I think a lot of that comes with just a comfort level and helping you get there okay so now take me a little bit through your APHA journey so you're here at Texas but what other meetings have you gone to and then how did that lead to your development as far as actually getting leadership positions formal leadership positions so the very first meeting I went to which I alluded to earlier was MRM the media regional meeting for just my region and that includes six different states and over 20 different chapters from the region and so that's a great way to meet the chapters that are close to you and the people that you'll see over and over and over again and so you'll see them and make those connections and start thinking about pharmacy on a larger scale past just the microcosm of what you see at your own school after that so I've gone to MRM three times now over three years after that this is my third APHA annual meeting which is always a pleasure it's so good to like there's so many excited passionate student pharmacist here I've also gone to the SLI which is summer Leadership Institute twice and that that's a limited conference where you have to be selected from your chapter to go and it really teaches you how to lead a chapter how to set out initiatives how to set a culture deal with conflict management things like that wonderful experience and yeah those are the main ones tell me a little bit more about the summer Leadership Conference is it a week is it a couple days so obviously you're chosen for it because of your potential to become a leader how does that develop you as a leader can you take me maybe day by day through the actual conference or what you do in that summer yeah so it's actually only a three-day conference early on it's the focus is on not working and really that's the biggest thing you'll get out of it all the skills that you develop across the multiple days are very exciting and very rewarding but you have to realize that it's the people that you learn from and the passions that they have that are gonna be the most valuable part of your own growth because there's there's they're gonna be the ones that inspire you everything else is like the tools for your success and so the first days a lot of a lot of just networking and getting to know people the second days they go through a lot of training programs for specific positions and specific executive positions how to run their chapter but they also have great speakers come in I remember last time there's a speaker that taught a lot about making things fun and at your own chapter in everything you do so the idea is that whatever you pursue if you make things fun make it a little bit light-hearted it's so much easier to deal with conflict management it's so much easier to bring people in get excited and want to be part of the program or initiative that you're undertaking and then you're also just more likely to really set out and proactively take on your own initiative not procrastinate to the last minute because oh I don't want to do this you know I'm just doing this for the position but you actually want to do it you care about and so I got a lot of ideas like that at the suburb Leadership Institute that was absolutely amazing and then also just getting to explore DC Washington DC a little bit where this house yeah that's my hometown so it's always nice to kind of go back to nation's capital not only for the APHA part of it but you kind of get to see kind of the seat of power and how things work there well let's shift a little bit here and tell me a little bit about your personal leadership duties what do you need to get done here in APHA and then what do your other APHA ASP members within your chapter need to get done here so I have a couple different duties here at the conference here in Nashville as the president of my chapter it's my job to make sure that we have we set everyone up for their success so making sure that everyone's not working and making sure everyone feels comfortable this is the first time for a lot of people is one of the largest pharmacy conferences that you'll ever see and so it can get a little intimidating being able to just emotionally be there and like guide people through the process it's actually a lot of what I do here as a president I don't really need to directly provide oversight or force people to do things you get you get out of it what you put into it I'm also the recent six member at large which means that I help oversee and kind of people from the over 20-something chapters at six different states and so what that comes with is making sure all the presidents and leaders from all the different chapters across the region feel comfortable and know what to do and how to lead their own chapters if they have any questions at all I'm here for them I'm also making sure I'm sure but all the sessions and really try to get the excitement going try to get people to meet each other and enable the other chapters to learn for a mother learn from each other and see a progressor on the initiatives in pharmacy we first learned to kind of go one-on-one with the patient help them we learn to lead others to help patients but you've actually taken it a step further and have created a collaboration into professionally with another student a med student actually who with a website and I wanted to talk a little bit about that we're in the digital age but a lot of times we don't see a tremendous amount of that content in our curriculum so tell me a little bit about the healthcare scholar comm okay so the Huffman scholar comm is an interprofessional student magazine and the only one I've ever been able to find on-line because I was I felt personally lacking and that's why I created this it actually started because I'm my my school you'd the University of Texas at Austin we started a program for all the students or for first-year students to really connect them with medical students Social Work students nursing students and learn the interprofessional side of things because when everyone in the healthcare team works together that's when you have the optimal outcomes and that's what the field has recognized in the movement they're growing towards unfortunately this program started a year after I came in to pharmacy school and so I always felt that you know it's the opportunity I really wanted but I couldn't really get and so I started this with my friend hearts the DoDEA absolutely wonderful guy he is in medical school right now and we want we recognized the value of interprofessionalism but then also the distinction that everyone brings to the table you know we go through school and unless our own didactic curriculum covers it we don't learn much about the other professions and there's sometimes stereotypes there's misinformation there's misunderstandings and we just don't know what every other profession does and everything every other profession doesn't know the extent that we go into our drug knowledge that we learn in our curriculum and so it's a medium die creative so that students can reach out and write their own articles about their experiences and their own healthcare professions and better unique to them they'll week all learn from and then also write about their experiences in the interprofessional studying how the examples that they have in their own lives we're working together with other healthcare providers really brought health brought patient care to the next level and led to outcomes that would not happen otherwise for the patient you know you're changing lives went through working together and so any student can reach out any student can subscribe it's absolutely free it's really just meant to help you learn in an entertaining way about the big picture being able to see healthcare as a whole and be more and enable your own competency in that way I have a bit of an interprofessional story generally when we talk about interprofessionalism it's these huge bring med students nursing students pharmacy students into a critical care type of emergency environment but my daughter broke her clavicle and she had to have this sling so obviously as you know we went to the physician the physician said it and then you know she put on this sling and my daughter my daughter my wife and I are both pharmacists and we could not get this thing to work right we thought it was broken or something like that but then we went to my mother-in-law who's a nurse she put the sling perfectly then sling isn't working again we go to school take it to the school nurse she fixes it perfectly you know and here my wife and I are both pharmacists for 20 years cannot get this stupid sling and I was like this is ridiculous and then it happened one more time where another nurse is like oh yeah it just goes like this so tell me do you have an interprofessional story where maybe you and this pre-med student or you and another practitioner from another discipline has encountered where it's better that you are working individually with your specific training and then working together to make a better outcome you know I don't have this story myself and that's part of why I made this because I want to hear the stories it's really what I've seen in the healthcare settings in the hospital settings that I go to even you know first schools when we have rotations they have check boxes of hey what did you have an interprofessional experience or what other professions did you meet with and so just the biggest thing I see is just going on rounds with all the different professions at the hospital where you have these patient cases where the hospital themselves didn't recognize one person is not enough one expertise is not enough we need everyone at the table in order to take care of this patient and so the physician will come to the board and bring their diagnosis the social care worker will talk about the background and if the therapeutic changes that we want to make or even realistic for them the pharmacist will come and talk about the nuances of the drug therapy and bring the details that no one thought of no one even realized and then the case manager comes and gives an overall view you know the nurse comes and talks about their personal interruptions with the patient how the patient is feeling if they feel ready to be discharged if they feel weak look weak things that you don't see without being there you know multiple times a day checking in on the patient and if you do ever do a case write-up of a patient all this thing all these things are obvious that you need all these in order to provide the right care but when it comes to real life it doesn't just happen people don't just present to you and you know all the details you need everyone on board to be able to come up with this this optimal outcome for them well I've asked you a lot of questions is there anything that you want to talk about that I didn't ask you about I think the only thing is kind of my philosophy on leadership in general and it's something that I did talk about a little bit but I think it's really important for all students are misis and all healthcare students you know when you go through undergrad or whatever route you took to get to the schools that you're in there's all very competitive and we've really had to stand out but now in pharmacy school it's still competitive but it's important to think about how to bring your own practice to the next level and how to bring patient care to the next level and to realize that this is going to be one of the last safe settings for you to push yourself push yourself to grow because you're in school still and so I think the biggest thing that I tell you know all the other people in my chapter all the members and all the other friends I have is just don't be scared to make mistakes really try to pursue whatever passion you have even if it's very single focus you know your family has a you know you have a family member with autism or you have a brother of diabetes or you personally have a healthcare disease or see a certain underserved community just take on as biggis of pursue as big as a project as you can and try to get the support you need but don't be afraid of film because this is going to be your chance to reach your limit and exceed it because when it comes to the real world you know the rule or concept real-world consequences but now you have all your mentors all your professors to watch out for you all your students to support you and friends and this is the best time to push yourself to the limit and really take advantage of your time in school James thanks so much for being in the pharmacy leaders podcast thank you very much it's a pleasure support for this episode comes from the audio 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 audiobook 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
