Production practice on the base of Kaskasu - as a means of improving professional competencies of students

From June 3 to June 14 of this year, 3rd year students of the educational program “Pharmacy” completed practical training in the subject “Pharmacognosy” at the Cascasu base. During the practice, students became familiar with the types of medicinal plants growing in alpine meadows and meadows on the territory of the Kaskasu base, and compiled a floristic list of medicinal plants. We became familiar with the growing season, family and life form of plants, and improved our skills in identifying medicinal plants in the wild by their morphological characteristics. They combined their theoretical knowledge with practice in herbarization, drying and storage of collected medicinal plant materials.

During the practice, students demonstrated their theoretical knowledge of the subject at a high level in the “My Practical Skills” competition. The competition was organized by the teaching staff of the Department of Pharmacognosy among students of SKMA, Astana Medical University and KazNU named after. Al-Farabi, undergoing training at the Kaskasu base.
The teams “Victory” (SKMA), “St. John’s wort” (Astana Medical University), “Esculap” (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University) took part in the competition.

The competition consisted of 3 stages:
1. Quiz;
2. Solve the puzzle;
3. Video competition.
The quiz consisted of 3 parts: description of herbarium specimens, testing and video questions. In this section, students were provided with herbarium samples and given a description of this object.

After this, they completed test tasks consisting of 10 questions and answered video questions asked by undergraduates and students of the department.

At stage 2, 2 rebus tasks were given. The last stage was a video competition. During this period, the teams showed pre-made videos on the topic “My days in practice.”

According to the results of the competition, the “Victory” team (SKMA) took 1st place, the “Aesculapius” team (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University) took 2nd place, and the “St. John’s wort” team (Astana Medical University) took 3rd place.
And the Aesculapius team (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University) was additionally awarded the “Best Video” nomination.
During the practice, students not only mastered practical skills, but also showed that the theoretical knowledge acquired in the laboratory lesson is at a high level and can be combined with practice.