St. Alexius College Pharmacy Department second year students marked the next step toward becoming pharmacists at their 6th Pinning and White Coat Ceremonies on May 22, 2017 at The Farm Convention Center, Carpenter Hill, City of Koronadal.
Pins were presented to 33 students and white coats were donned with the academic team, faculty, staff, parents and guests looking on. The event started with a Paraliturgy led by Sir Ernie Bonzo, followed by the Pinning and White Coat Ceremonies. Dr. Nanette P. Franco, MD, FPARM, MSHSM, FPCHA warmly welcomed everyone with her opening remarks. The speaker for the event was Ana Lou Grace Manluyang, RPh, MSPharm, Clin Pharm. She urged the students to learn and embrace the challenges of being the future pharmacists. She presented the gaps of the current pharmacy practice and what were the things that could be done to improve the pharmacy practice in the Philippines. She noted also the significance of wearing the White Coat. Ms. Manluyang also shared her experience when she had her recent training at Malaysia. She explained that wearing of white coat was both a responsibility and commitment -a responsibility to provide rational use of drugs in order to achieve optimum therapeutic outcome and a commitment to serve the patients with love and care.
The event concluded with a luncheon fellowship held at the same place. It was indeed a fruitful year and a successful event seeing happy faces of parents and students on their white uniform with their pins and white coat.