Pharmacy response to COVID-19: lessons learnt from Canada
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COMMENTARY
Pharmacy response to COVID‑19: lessons learnt from Canada Ali Elbeddini1* , Amy Botross2, Rachel Gerochi2, Mohamed Gazarin1 and Ahmed Elshahawi3
Abstract When the first wave of COVID-19 hit in March 2020, health care professionals across Canada were challenged to quickly and efficiently adapt to change their work practices in these unprecedented times. Pharmacy professionals, being some of the very few front-line health care workers who remained accessible in person for patients, had to rapidly adopt critical changes in their pharmacies to respond in the best interest of their patients and their pharmacy staff. As challenging and demanding as such changes were, they provided pharmacists with invaluable lessons that would be imperative as the country enters a potentially more dangerous second wave. This article seeks to identify and summarize opportunities for improvement in pharmacy as learnt from the pandemic’s first wave. Such areas include but are not limited to handling of drug shortage and addressing drug hoarding and stockpiling, providing physical and mental support for staff, timing of flu vaccine and COVID-19 screening/testing, collaboration between different health care sites as well as collaboration with patients and with other health care professionals, telemedicine and willingness to adopt innovative ideas, need for more staff training and more precise research to provide accurate information and finally the need for more organizational and workplace support. Learning from what went well and what did not work in the early stages of the pandemic is integral to ensure pharmacy professionals are better prepared to protect themselves and their patients amidst a second and possibly subsequent waves. Keywords: COVID-19, Opportunities, Wave-2 Background When COVID-19 pandemic started, pharmacy professionals found themselves facing multiple challenges that surfaced during these unprecedented times and were forced to act quickly and safely to protect their patients and their staff. As the pandemic’s first wave progressed and started to peak, the country’s medical clinics and physicians’ offices closed their doors to the public and opted for virtual patient-interactions as a strategy to mitigate infection spread. Pharmacists quickly became some of the very few health care professionals (HCPs) accessible in person to the general public to provide medical advice. They efficiently worked tirelessly on the frontlines *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Winchester District Memorial Hospital, 566 Louise Street, Winchester, ON KK0C2K0, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
to provide additional services in an attempt to ease the burden of the healthcare system and prevent unnecessary visits to healthcare facilities [1]. Many pharmacies also initiated “Drive thru” services to optimize safety of both patients and staff [2]. Given the unparalleled work that pharmacists are now doing on the front lines, it would be hard to believe that even before COV
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