SOUTH KINGSTOWN – For the third time in nine years, a team from the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy won the 12th annual New England Pharmacy Convention’s Pepto Bowl competition, the university reported.
On Sept. 23, at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., Matt Lippertshauser and Ethan Melillo, URI College of Pharmacy students, won the “Jeopardy!”-style academic competition. Their victory marks the third time in nine years that URI has won the contest, said College of Pharmacy Clinical Professor Kelly Orr, who nervously watched the high-stakes play. “It was very stressful for me,” she says of the moment in the second round when URI landed a Daily Double.
The classmates, who are expected to graduate with doctorate of pharmacy degrees in May 2017, bested pharmacy schools from the University of Connecticut, MCPHS University/Worcester-Manchester and the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, Conn. Four other schools were eliminated earlier in the day during the competition’s written exam portion, URI reported.
“It’s a fun rivalry for the schools, and the pharmacists watching the competition get continuing education credits for it,” Orr said. “There’s no prize money, just bragging rights.”
The Pepto Bowl earned its name from the fact Proctor & Gamble, which makes the over-the-counter Pepto-Bismol, had endowed the contest, whose official name is the Student and Pharmacist Self-Care Championship. In the pharmacy profession, “self-care” encompasses an individual’s independent actions to prevent, diagnose and treat illness, and over-the-counter medications and supplements are integral to such self-care. The national Non-Prescription Medicines Academy and the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations compile the questions, which address a broad array of products and uses, doses, side effects and adverse reactions. Contestants have only 20 seconds to answer each question.
Clinical Associate Professor Ginger Lemay chose Lippertshauser and Melillo to represent URI because of their strength in self-care classes and their previous pharmacy experience. They had about two weeks to prepare, taking Orr’s advice to closely study “The Handbook of Non-Prescription Drugs,” a handbook of more than 1,000 pages.
