“Pharmaceutical and medical knowledge showdown – PMKS” is a competition of medical and pharmacy students, which was first held in Split last year, and this year was hosted by the University of Sarajevo, specifically by the Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine from the 25th to the 27th of April 2019.
In this competition, students of the final years of studies from Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had a chance to show their knowledge. Participants came from 18 faculties from 9 university cities – Mostar, Tuzla, Banja Luka, Split, Zagreb, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Podgorica and Sarajevo.
In addition to the competitors themselves, the competition was attended by professors from visiting faculties, as well as distinguished professors of the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Pharmacy in Sarajevo that host the competition. Two student associations, Students’ Association of the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Association of Students of the Faculty of Medicine are working together on this project.
In addition, the participants had the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills, attend various lectures, workshops, and also meet and feel all the beauties of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The theme of the competition is “Primary Health Care – Cooperation of Doctor and Pharmacist”.
“We consider that the cooperation of health workers is of great importance when it comes to health and care of patients, and also, we are trying to build awareness about future pharmacy and medical devices through this project. Competition is designed to consist of three tasks and each of the following tasks provides a more realistic clinical experience. Teams were composed of medical and pharmacy students from different universities. This type of learning has already been implemented in North America and many Western European countries and aims to link these two sciences in a unique clinical case when shown necessary cooperation in everyday work . This system is called OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) and PMKS aims to adopt this system in our education,” was stated.
This competition is truly unique considering the fact that it unites students throughout the region and gives them the opportunity to show, apart from showing their competitive spirit, how many people, especially young people from the Balkans, are united.