PANS News
Pharmacist Michael MacNeil and Pharmacy Assistant Carly LeBlanc both work at the QEII Health Sciences Centre. Mike is a clinical pharmacist in both general and vascular surgery at the Halifax Infirmary and the Victoria General Hospitals in Halifax. Carly is a pharmacy technician who works in the surgery pre-admission clinic and in the emergency department. If you have ever been admitted for surgery in Halifax, there is a good chance you have met one or both of them.
Pharmacist and Certified Diabetes Educator Stacey Smith greats me in the waiting room at a medical clinic in Spryfield with a big welcoming smile and invites me to join her in her office. If it looks like any other doctor's office you may visit, it is because it is one. She shares the office with a doctor at the clinic. On the desk, there is a computer that gives her access to all the patient file information, including the results of blood tests. Stacey tells me that she has a patient who has agreed to let me sit in on his consultation if I am interested. Of course, I am.
Locals refer to it as Camp Hill Hospital, but its actual name is Camp Hill Veterans Memorial Building and it is a long term care facility whose current population includes veterans of World War II and the Korean War. It is home to 175 veterans, mostly men. The average age of a resident at Camp Hill is 92.
There is an unmistakable energy that radiates from pharmacists Jaclyn Tran and Jo-Anne Wilson as they talk about their work with patients suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease. They work on a multidisciplinary team that includes nephrologists, nurse practitioners, dieticians, and social workers in Halifax as part of the Renal Program.
It's a lot of responsibility to be on one man's shoulders, but pharmacist Christopher Daley is responsible, along with his colleagues, for keeping about 800 of Nova Scotia's transplant patients alive and healthy. He is the Clinical Pharmacy Coordinator for the Multi-Organ Transplant Program (MOTP) in Atlantic Canada.
If you, or a loved one, have been admitted into the hospital, chances are you have required some kind of Intravenous (IV) treatment. What you may not know is that the majority of IV bags used in hospitals are specially made, by hand, by dedicated pharmacy technicians like Kayla Ross.
Sylvia Yazbeck and Kelly Foster are Clinical Pharmacists at Halifax's IWK Hospital. Both are Dalhousie Pharmacy graduates who work in obstetrics and women's surgery. Their patients ages range from 0 (newborns) to senior citizens in their 90s. Their practice is varied and extremely rewarding.
While many students can become narrowly focused on their studies, as a student Craig Connolly was able to see a bigger picture. From that time on, the past ten years, he has been involved in expanding the profession of pharmacy through his extensive work with the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists (NSCP), the organization that licenses and regulates pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and pharmacies in Nova Scotia.