Taught by an experienced and practicing faculty, pharmacy students at the International Medical University (IMU) will be given relevant practice exposure as part of their programme. Students studying in this degree programme will also have the opportunity to an elective placement. This year, two students, Taasjir Kaur and Nicole Tay Wuen Rong, completed their electives at Blackmores Malaysia, a health supplement company from Australia. The two students share their elective experience here.
| Taasjir Kaur |
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My name is Taasjir Kaur and I am 22 years old, currently a BP215 undergraduate student at the International Medical University. I have currently completed my Year 3 and was required to complete my elective during our break which was approximately 3 months, depending on our interest. I choose Blackmores as the company at where I wanted to complete my internship.  I always wanted to try out being in the corporate field as a pharmacist and my interest to explore more about complementary medicine drove my attention to Blackmores which is a health supplement company from Australia. During my 2 months’ internship, I learned a lot of different things which was very new to me and this experience has helped me a lot in improving my soft skills and my critical thinking. It was a real working life experience where we were trained in the actual tasks in 2 different departments which is regulatory affairs and education and training. Throughout these 2 months, we had the chance to expand our networks with some of the retail pharmacists, our head boss from Australia and pharmacists from different backgrounds. Not only that, we were also given training to provide counselling to our customers regarding complementary medicine and had the chance to learn on how to perform bone density check-up using ultrasound. At the same time, we had the chance to practise and improve our communication skills by interacting with real customers with different complications and issues. Completing our 2 months here in Blackmores was filled with a lot of challenges and experiences which will help us in our upcoming years in every aspect. |
| Nicole Tay Wuen Rong |
 My Name is Nicole Tay Wuen Rong and I am 22 years old, currently a BP215 undergraduate student at the International Medical University. Interning with Blackmores Malaysia was a really good experience, in an unexpected way. As a BPharm student in IMU, we were exposed to clinical and community settings, not much of the industrial or corporate sector. I was with Blackmores Malaysia for two months and a half; the first month was spent in Regulatory Affairs while the remainder is in the Education and Training (E&T) Department. The first month was challenging, being new to guidelines set by NPRA to regulate the registration of health supplements etc. E&T involved more data entry and communication skills as we get to perform bone density tests for the public in retail pharmacies and reply enquiries on various supplements. |
