Senior pharmacy students are supporting Ontario’s health-care system in the fight against COVID-19. These students are completing their rotations, a requirement for senior pharmacy students where they are placed in health-care sites across the province for six months.
Here are some of their stories:
Ben Austin (Rx2011) and Chris Hartman (Rx2011) are seasoned pharmacists and graduates of the School of Pharmacy’s very first class. They’ve owned and run the Ingersoll Pharmasave for years along with Rob Parsons and Dom Ricciuto, building up a reputation as the go-to place for exceptional customer care and innovative patient services. Before COVID-19 struck, they offered all the usual fixings of a community pharmacy plus extras like travel health, opioid agonist therapy, medical cannabis consultations and a wide variety of injection services.
Kelly Grindrod never was your traditional neighbourhood pharmacist.
A DPP4 inhibitor bound to Covid-19 protein called SARS-CoV-2 Mpro, which is involved in its replication
Being a grad student is tough – there’s course work, comprehensive exams and research to balance on top of managing personal commitments and teaching duties. When you add working at a pharmacy during a global pandemic into the mix, the days only get busier.
Dani Thomas (Rx2018) stands a good distance from a car in the parking lot of Two Rivers Family Health Team in Cambridge. The person inside has their window rolled down and Dani’s wearing a mask, asking them questions. It’s mid-May and still snowing.
The person in the car is one of family health team’s patients on warfarin, a blood thinning medication that requires regular and careful monitoring by a pharmacist. Dani, a pharmacist on the team, jots down notes from the discussion and takes a drop of blood from the patient’s finger to test their levels.
A course created by the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy and the Centre for Extended Learning (CEL) was recognized by the national association for university continuing education. The course, Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) in Primary Care, received the Credit Programming under 48 hours award from the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE) for 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, pharmacists are reporting a spike in drug shortages.
Professor Kelly Grindrod, a pharmacist and professor at the School of Pharmacy, explains why drug shortages are occurring, which medications are affected, and how Canadians can access medications at this time.
In between studying for his classes and winter term exams, pharmacy student Mayur Tailor has been closely following news related to COVID-19.
Noticing that pharmacists weren’t often being included in discussions involving frontline health-care providers, the first-year student jumped into action, rallying a team of University students from across Ontario on two overarching initiatives.
Andrea Edginton (BSc and PhD, University of Guelph) has been named the next Hallman Director of the School of Pharmacy. Professor Edginton is a globally recognized leader in physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling and simulation, specializing in dose-exposure extrapolation to special populations.