Tag Archives: pharmacists

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Welcome to Canada

By now, everyone has heard of the Syrian refugee crisis. The Syrian people, having witnessed unspeakable tragedy and horror, are fleeing their home country in the hopes of finding a new, safer, more prosperous life elsewhere.

The Government of Canada has committed to resettling 25,000 Syrians here in Canada. It may have been naive of me but I didn’t think many of them would be coming to our humble little province. I assumed they would be heading west, to Ontario, or Quebec or even further west. How very wrong I was.

I should have known that Nova Scotians would step up to the need. Mosques, church groups and government agencies have sponsored families. They are supporting them as they enter their new lives and helping them with things we all take for granted. As of February 5 of this year, over 500 refugees have arrived in our wonderful little province and I have had the pleasure of meeting a few of them in my capacity as their new pharmacist.

My first meeting came when a gentleman and his interpreter arrived at our store asking for help with itchy skin. He didn’t have his paper that would allow him to go to the doctor, and as myself, my manager and my student all worked to find out how to get him his paper and if he could see a doctor, his interpreter kept telling us that he was saying over and over “Canada is the best country in the world.” At the end of our interaction, we all welcomed him to Nova Scotia and wished him well. We felt we did very little for him – a Google search, a phone call. But to both men, it seemed this little act of kindness was huge and brightened their day. It certainly brightened ours.

The next time I met a refugee was when a gentleman and his son arrived at the pharmacy with the proper papers in tow but not a single syllable of English. Through mime and drawings, we were able to convey to him that his son was to take his amoxicillin three times daily until they were finished. Once they finally understood, they smiled and said thank you. Apparently, in a super Canadian fashion, thank you was the one phrase they had learned.

After both of these scenarios, I was able to go home to my warm house, snuggle my fluffy cat and make a nice meal for myself. I was able to call my friends and family and ask how their days were, read a good book have a cup of tea and go to bed. As I went through the motions of my day, I was struck by how brave these people truly are. I tried to imagine myself in a country in which I didn’t understand the language. I imagined trying to navigate a doctor’s visit, a trip to the grocery store, a walk down the street. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to do all of those things that I take for granted in a totally new country after having fled a war zone. And these folks are doing it with a smile on their faces! They’re so glad to be out of the war zone and starting fresh. They will have lots of healing to do, and lots of learning to do. And so will we. We have to learn how to help these people. How do we communicate effectively? How can we make them feel welcome? How can we tell them where the nearest grocery store is? These are all things that we will learn as they learn to adjust to this new, snowy place.

Despite the fact that their English was broken at best, at the end of both of my interactions with the above mentioned folks, I left them with a sentence they understood right away. As soon as I said it, either alone or through an interpreter, their faces split into some of the brightest smiles I’ve ever seen- Welcome to Canada!

For more information on refugees and what we as health professionals can do, visit www.isans.ca or your pharmacy college website!

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, employer or affiliation.

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Pharmacists Abroad

When you live on the east coast in Canada, you come to expect that the weather in November starts to get chilly. Temperatures regularly tease with the freezing mark and the occasional snowfall get folks scampering for their winter tires after traffic reports fill up with snarls.

So some friends and family decided to bypass November and head for sunnier climes in Florida…and were hit with torrential rains and single digit temperatures (or state-side, ‘in the forties’). We brought the kids to a magical place which you may have heard about. I went to go meet some famous princesses, and begrudgingly agreed to bring the kids with me. Three of our group were pharmacists and try as we may, conversation often turned to pharmacy topics much to the chagrin of everyone else.

Pharmacists are a passionate bunch, to be sure. Although vent sessions prove popular on occasion, most of the conversation turned to the differences in pharmacy between countries and the many signs of progress we’ve seen in the past 5-7 years. Who would have thought that giving injections for flu or travel vaccines would be in such high demand? I was completely ignorant to this when I graduated and figured that the awareness and growth of this service would be organic, not the year over year explosion that we’ve seen. It’s the same with prescribing; it’s becoming much more intuitive for me today to explore my options when a patient arrives at the counter with an expired prescription or a hospital discharge ordering a non-formulary medication.

Some folks would never see a doctor if they could get away with it. Nurturing and maintaining that circle of care is still very important for monitoring and education. However, I do see inefficiency rear it’s ugly head in the form of one to three-month supplies with no refills for stable therapy that has gone unchanged for years. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that people expect (and often demand) that we extend or re-new their prescriptions. The good news is that now in many instances, we can do just that. Taking on that prescribing liability is a huge adjustment, but as a group we’re warming up quickly to the idea. Contrast that potential liability with buying Prozac off the shelf in a Mexican airport terminal – no danger there of course.

So maybe pharmacy isn’t as magical as say, frozen castles and fireworks (though the apothecary on Main St. serves some magical-tasting sweets), but our ability to adapt in such a short transition period of 3-5 years is pretty impressive. We’re just getting started too: with integrated databases and future ability to request blood-work, some of that maintenance burden may be lifted from general practitioners. They can focus on diagnostics and problem-solving while allowing pharmacists to help screen and respond to T3 and INR values.

We will continue to be pharmacists in other lands. We will be curious to visit pharmacies in other countries and to see how their healthcare system works. What products are available for self-selection and which ones are prescription? Sometimes we see drugs that have not yet been approved in Canada, or an old standby that goes by an exotic name.

Have fun on vacation. Sometimes the time away from the ‘job’ can help rebuild the love for the ‘profession.’

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, employer or affiliation.

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It Comes in 50 Shades Apparently

A few years back, I was hosting a segment of our yearly 2-day orientation session for new pharmacist hires to the company. Most were new graduates but some were coming to us from other provinces and/or chains.

I was aware that a certain book was making the rounds at about that time and somehow my improvisational skills led me to drop the title with respect to the new expanded pharmacy scope. To my ‘surprise’, at least 3 people in the audience were in the midst of reading this book and were justifiably confused (though intrigued) by my seemingly random tangent. Although pharmacy is an exciting place, it seemingly pales in comparison to the plot of a story I should have spent more time investigating.  Now, I have never read the book and understand it to be a wholesome story of two people that meet and enjoy going for coffee, holding hands and don’t-you-dare-leave-this-book-laying-around-anyone-under-18.

After about 30 seconds, folks started reaching beneath the tables to gently pick their jaws back up from the floor. Queue the giggling. I enjoyed the mid-morning giddiness myself.

My point was that pharmacists, in a general sense, are used to having set rules to follow. Now every profession has rules in the form of guidelines, regulations, acts, or policies. We also have best practice memos to further help direct and support us as individuals. These documents are vital to minimizing liability as practitioners while stressing public safety. Those rules prior to the legislative changes meant we had our comfy room in the healthcare house; the boundaries were established and many scenarios had played out countless times. Black, meet white. Now, if somebody came to the door of the pharmacy room and invited you out, then you would have a taste of collaborative practice and it seemed like a treat. It was like being allowed to eat at the big-kids’ table at Thanksgiving; an experience you’ve waited for and look forward to the next time it happens.

So enter the blueprint of pharmacy and changes to pharmacy acts across the country. We now replace the walls to that comfy room with strips of yellow duct tape on the carpet. Now you can see the hallway, or venture into the next room without needing approval. You know where you used to spend all of your time, but your space got a whole lot bigger. Needless to say, each scenario with medication reviews, prescribing, administering, or ordering blood tests is new to everyone, and therefore virtually impossible to predict. Becoming a clinician means a certain degree of trial-and-error, and judgement calls based on the best information possible. There may not be a tidy ‘right answer’ or a similar situation on which to build.

As we gain confidence in our worth and abilities, many pharmacists may completely leave their yellow outline and settle in different areas of the healthcare house. They may join travel clinics and vaccinate full time, or perhaps pharmacists may liaise with physicians’ offices to perform medication review consults in their offices. They may become more visible and independent in rural communities as they perform minor ailment and emergency prescribing services.

In each possibility, and for each and every pharmacist delving into said opportunity, there will be fifty shades. You will be making decisions and backing them up with gusto. You will be challenged from time to time, but so is each and every health professional out there.

Embrace the grey. Explore the new rooms. Make yourself at home.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency, employer or affiliation.