Svetlana Litchmanova on co-op in a pharmacy. Waterloo Pharmacy co-op students, employers and staff collaborated to achieve 100% co-op employment for pharmacy students throughout 2020.
Anthony Miller (right) has put in many long days in the seven months since COVID-19 first hit Canada. He’s the experiential learning coordinator for Waterloo Pharmacy’s co-operative education program and along with the experiential team, particularly Sarah de Waal and Professor Nancy Waite, he’s overcome many hurdles to ensure Pharmacy students continue to experience safe co-op work terms.
COVID-19 has impacted 2020 co-op work terms in the winter, spring and Fall Terms, with some jobs being cancelled and others created on very short notice.
“I’ve been so impressed with how resilient our students have been,” Miller says. “All of our students on co-op in March were on their very first work term so were very junior students. Some were working in health-care institutions that were caring for COVID patients during those early outbreaks. Many others were in front-line positions in community pharmacies. Despite these challenges and the constant uncertainty, our students remained professional and adaptable.”
For some students, the pandemic caused a dramatic shift in job duties. In hospital sites, students were no longer allowed on patient floors and instead took on new roles in different parts of the hospital or worked remotely. In a few cases, work terms unfortunately came to an end a few weeks early. To navigate all these changes, the School’s experiential team connected with students, having one-on-one conversations to assess their situations and determine if additional actions were required. A “command center,” made up of everyone on the team and led by Waite, met daily to go over the previous day’s updates.
“Our co-op employers were fantastic partners through all of the chaos,” Miller says. “Logistically, many employers were spending more money to have all the right protective equipment which was in very short supply. Sites had to change processes, puts up barriers, add deliveries and more.”
Many pharmacies saw a decrease in customer traffic or faced uncertainty over what would happen next.
“Even still they kept students employed and commented on how helpful it was to have students at that time,” Miller says.
As the Winter Term came to an end, the experiential team was already ramping up for spring work terms. Twenty jobs were cancelled due to the pandemic at the last minute, leaving 20 students potentially without work. Miller and his team worked hard to connect with the students, seeing what their interests and preferences were for a job and then reached out to employers to see if they might be able to hire.
Read the full story on the Waterloo Stories website.
The many locations Anthony Miller has used for his work from home offices over 2020