The School of Pharmacy is piloting a health service
Mandatory health service for health science students took effect at the start of the 2018 academic year. At UM, this program—which promotes primary prevention* among priority populations—applies to students in the medicine, pharmacy, midwifery, and dentistry programs. Here is an update on its implementation at the School of Pharmacy.
“When a young person speaks to another young person, trust and dialogue develop more easily. The same should hold true when it comes to health risk prevention,” explains Laurence Vian, who is convinced of the educational value of the health service. Since September, the dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and professor of toxicology has been overseeing the implementation of this complex system within the faculty. “The health service became operational almost immediately after its creation, without any associated funding. Faculty members are committed to ensuring its implementation is a success. Nevertheless, questions arise, such as compensation for students who will travel throughout the region to deliver a prevention message for three days in 2019 and then for three weeks in subsequent years, ” she recently noted.
Primary prevention
To address inequalities in access to health information, the 90 fifth-year pharmacy students will reach out to communities far from the university—particularly the most vulnerable, including young people—to prevent health risks. “Faced tomorrow with the health issues their patients bring to their counters, future community pharmacists will need to convey messages about primary prevention. They will have to make their knowledge accessible to ensure that their messages are understood by all audiences, ” explains Laurence Vian, who sees the health outreach program as an excellent methodological exercise.
Concrete actions
“Our fifth-year students have the necessary background to lead simple addiction prevention initiatives. Equipped with fun and educational kits, they received pedagogical guidance from faculty members in the School of Education, who trained them over a short period to develop an effective teaching approach,” explains the dean of the faculty. For the first year of the health service’s rollout, students from the Faculty of Pharmacy will spend two or three days working in classrooms from first grade through twelfth grade at schools in the Gard, Aude, and Hérault departments. These mandatory sessions will last 45 minutes, be conducted in pairs in split classes of up to 12 students, and take place in the presence of the school’s health coordinator. These are optimal conditions for addressing a critical public health issue: protecting children, adolescents, and young adults—who, within the French population, remain the primary victims in 2019— from the risk of addiction and its devastating effects.
Fun and educational kits on addiction were provided to students (question-and-answer cards, board games) to help them carry out their primary prevention initiatives.
* Primary prevention refers to measures aimed at reducing the incidence of a disease, decreasing the number of new cases, or delaying the onset of initial symptoms.
The medical service as seen by…
Hélène Fenet, professor of public health, responsible for the administrative and educational organization of the health services department
“The health service is a wonderful opportunity for pharmacy students to develop their health education skills to better support primary prevention. This project was developed in collaboration with the Regional Health Agency and the local education authority, which identified the topics to be addressed in schools. Our students have carried out initiatives related to their academic training, including in the areas of addiction (tobacco, alcohol, hard drugs, screen time, and cyberaddiction...) and nutrition.”
Hajar Hadjseyd, a fifth-year pharmacy student
“Assigned to Gaston Darboux High School in Nîmes to carry out my public health service, I will be working to raise awareness among 10th, 11th, and 12th graders about the risks of screen addiction. I will begin by asking them what addiction means to them so that I can build on that and provide them with essential educational information about the real and often overlooked risks of regular and prolonged use of various screens.”
The Faculty in Numbers
- 2,971 students
- 356 master's students
- 110 undergraduate students
- 756 PACES students
- 100 students in audiology
- 72 wine studies students
Provide training on flu vaccinations
To improve vaccination coverage and reduce the annual number of deaths caused by seasonal influenza, the Occitanie region was selected in 2018 as a pilot region for a trial of influenza vaccination administered by community pharmacists. At the end of the summer, the Faculty of Pharmacy launched a continuing education program on “flu vaccination,” initiated by Professors Jacqueline Azay-Milhau, Agnès Muller, and Gilberte Marti-Mestres.
Intended for licensed and assistant community pharmacists, this one-day training was delivered by faculty instructors in partnership with doctors and nurses fromthe Bouisson-Bertrand Institute. Fifth-year pharmacy students also benefit from this training as part of their curriculum, with support from the Regional Health Agency and the Order of Pharmacists. The success of this pilot program is expected to lead to the expansion of in-store flu vaccination to the rest of France in the coming months.