Young Professionals Session – Beyond borders: Exploring European mobility in hospital pharmacy

This year’s Young Professionals Session will be dedicated to international mobility and work experiences.

This session will bring together hospital pharmacists who have embarked on journeys that took them across borders within Europe, enabling them to gain diverse perspectives and invaluable insights into healthcare systems, pharmaceutical practices, and cultural nuances.

Through a series of shared experiences, participants will explore the motivations, challenges, and opportunities associated with international experiences, both before and after graduation.

At the end of this session, attendees will gain a comprehensive insight into the possibilities, procedures and strategies associated with mobility in Europe, along with the challenges and rewards it entails.

The conference will be followed by a networking session. This session will offer an opportunity for future and young pharmacists to exchange with pharmacists who have had international experiences and perhaps to connect with potential hosts.

Join the Young Professionals session and explore the world!

Xandra Garcia, Hospital Pharmacist at Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid, Spain. As host of the SILCC programme, she will tell us about the various pre- and post-graduate European mobility opportunities available to hospital pharmacists.

Evelyne van den Broucke, a hospital pharmacists and a third year PhD student in pharmaceutical sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium. During her pharmacy studies, she enjoyed a 6-month Erasmus exchange experience at the University College London School of Pharmacy in 2017. During the presentation, she will share her Erasmus experience and how, to this day, she keeps learning new skills by moving abroad.

Stefanie Deuster, Head of the department quality assurance in the pharmacy, University Hospital Basel (Switzerland), whose career focusses on the preparation of drugs for the special needs of patients as well as the manufacturing of investigational medicinal products for clinical trials and all the requirements for assuring the quality of the drugs. She originally comes from Germany, where she graduated and started working as a hospital pharmacist. She will tell us how she overcame the challenge of moving to another country to work in hospital pharmacy.

Lene Juel Kjeldsen, is Chief Pharmacist in Hospital Sonderjylland (Denmark) and Head of Research at the University of Southern Denmark. After graduating in Pharmacy in Denmark, she completed a PhD on quality use of medicine, at the University of Queensland, Australia. She will tell us about her internationnal experience and how it started her career, which has led to her curent practice in management, research and clinical pharmacy.

Kornelia Chrapkova, Head of Clinical Pharmacy Department, Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine, will talk about how she travelled professionaly between Slovakia (where she graduated at Faculty of Pharmacy), Czech Republic and United Kingdom. During her presentation, she will be talking about her professional journey starting in a community pharmacy, followed by studying and gaining experience abroad and other important milestones which helped her to implement and develop clinical pharmacy service in the largest transplant centre in Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Nuria Sala, Head of the Pharmacy Department of Hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Manresa, in Altaia, Spain. During her career, she seized opportunities to complete internships in France (in a community pharmacy), Canada (in the Canadian Pharmacists Association) and the United States (in hospital pharmacy) to further develop her pharmacist skills. She will tell us about her worldwide experiences and how learning about other ways of working, other healthcare systems and other point of view has greatly contributed to her career and current practice.