In late February, the Region needed a vaccine clinic to serve downtown Kitchener. Joe Lee and the Centre for Family Medicine (CFFM) stepped forward. When it came to finding an appropriate location, CFFM asked their neighbour, the School of Pharmacy.
“The word ‘no’ isn’t in our vocabulary,” says Trenny McGinnis, pharmacy’s administrative officer. “Our executive team had already implemented changes to support the vaccine effort, from injection-training students earlier in the program to creating COVID educational materials. Partnering on a clinic was a logical next step.”
The clinic was expected to open in March, but transforming the pharmacy school, located on the Health Sciences Campus (HSC), into a health-care space in that time was a daunting task. A team from the School of Pharmacy, including Nancy Waite, Kelly Grindrod, Brett Barrett and Ken Manson, got to work, researching existing vaccine clinics and visiting the Grand River Hospital clinic for ideas.
“We took what we learned and looked at our space,” Waite says. “We conducted a walk through with our partners at CFFM, and at the end we turned to each other and said, with a mix of surprise and trepidation, ‘I think this could work!’”
Read the full story on the Waterloo News page.