The MPharm is one of the toughest degrees, but for many students the degree alone is not the only way to get the most out of your university experience. 

Ramisa Ahmed, a University of Portsmouth MPharm graduate, has just started as a foundation trainee pharmacist.  

Her schedule is split between her PCN and hospital pharmacy roles for her foundation year, but throughout university she took on a host of different roles. 

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After attending the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) conference at her university, and seeing what her fellow students were up to, she put herself forward for a role in the BPSA. 

Ahmed was voted as southern area coordinator in July 2023 where she organised what the universities in her region were doing, despite never having organised a conference before.  

She says putting herself in that position meant she “learnt so much”. 

“You have to organise two regional conferences, and they can be on any topic, but you keep it to what members like to see,” she tells C+D. “You have to promote it, and get in touch with people from the universities and speakers who have busy schedules, and lead them.” 

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This role helped Ahmed understand how to advocate better for issues she felt strongly about, such as diverse representation in pharmacy. This led her to speak at a conference for Empowering Student Leadership in Healthcare (ESLIH) where she spoke about why diversity in leadership is important. 

“Having the role in the BPSA really shaped what I did after that, because it put me in positions which put me out there a bit more. I wear the hijab, and I had students that also wear hijabs say how it encourages them to do things like this.” 

Ahmed had to build up her public speaking skills but found this improved her university assignments as she became “a lot more confident doing presentations” and going “on placements”. 

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Outside of the BPSA, Ahmed got stuck into other areas of interest to her. One of them came through meeting the Pharmacists’ Defence Association staff at a conference. 

“One of the sessions was led by PDA chair Mark Koziol, and he was talking about the Medicines to Ukraine campaign. I was always interested in humanitarian work, but I never correlated pharmacy into humanitarian work. It brought two things I’m passionate about together.” 

She asked to create a campaign at her university to raise money for the PDA’s Medicines To campaign. The PDA judged all the student poster campaigns and Portsmouth’s won, so Ahmed got to join the PDA on their visit to the 2023 FIP Congress in Brisbane, Australia. 

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She’s still a PDA student representative and having got involved in the humanitarian pharmacy through the organisation, she sees herself going into that field in the future. 

But since then, Ahmed’s also took on additional positions with the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation (IPSF) as a European public health coordinator. She creates resources and materials for pharmacy students on things like tuberculosis, tropical diseases and patient safety in an accessible format for students. 

Ahmed’s also been the social secretary for her university’s pharmacy society where she has put on educational and social events, and most recently was president of the university’s Friends of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) society, which fundraises for the charity. 

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She says these extracurricular activities have made her very grateful to experience so much, but they have also created transferable skills to help Ahmed in her pharmacy career. 

“I used to be scared of leadership positions, but having undergone those roles, I’ve realised leadership is so varied. It’s been about teamwork, advocacy and representation. I would love to take on more leadership roles.” 

She found balancing her time between all these endeavours wasn’t “straightforward” but being “interested in all those things made it easier. It didn’t feel like an extra burden. Now I’m doing less things, I feel like I have more time, which is weird.” 

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“Putting yourself outside of your comfort zone could change the direction of your career or open new opportunities you didn’t know about. Don’t feel limited. 

“I’ve learnt so much, networked with loads of people, and learnt more about pharmacy through these extracurricular things I wouldn’t have known by just completing the MPharm.  

“There’s so much you can do and contribute, and people are willing to hear your ideas and opinions.”