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This past week, the College was fortunate enough to be invited back to the second annual Mental Health and Wellness Summit hosted by the First Nations Health Authority!
This past week, the College was fortunate enough to be invited back to the second annual Mental Health and Wellness Summit hosted by the First Nations Health Authority!
May 6-12 is Mental Health Week!
Stigma is an everyday reality for many Canadians living with a mental health issue, or addiction. They fear that they will be treated and looked upon differently because of their illness and, as such, will lose access to important services.
This February, the College issued a call for applications from pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and the public and received an overwhelming response of over 90 applications.
We'd like to thank all applicants for their interest in the College. The College’s volunteer committee members enable the College to achieve its mandate of regulating the pharmacy profession in the public interest.
Like any business, physical or operational changes to a pharmacy may be necessary from time to time in order to meet the needs of the patients it serves. These changes must be reported to the College in accordance with the Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act (PODSA), the Pharmacy Operations General Regulation, and the College’s bylaws.
On April 1, 2018, the College’s amendments to the Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act Bylaws came into effect. The first pharmacies to complete pharmacy licence renewals under the new requirements were those whose licences expired on June 30, 2018. They marked the beginning of the year-long transition period, which ended with pharmacies whose licence expires in May 2019.
On November 1, 2018, new reporting requirements for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) came into effect. The new federal regulations and provincial standards identified the reporting requirements for pharmacists, physicians, and nurse practitioners.
The College would like to remind pharmacies and pharmacy professionals involved in sterile compounding that the second phase of the Model Standards for Pharmacy Sterile Compounding should be completed by May 2019.
Compliance packs, more commonly known as “Blister Packs”, are a useful tool to increase medication adherence in patients experiencing difficulties with medication management.
However, due to the often-complex nature of the medication regimens; the potential for frequent therapy changes; and the multi-step process required for dispensing in compliance packs, they also introduce increased risks for errors to occur. Registrants need to be aware of these increased risks, and how to prevent errors from occurring for medications dispensed in this manner.
Since the introduction of the new ownership requirements under the Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act (PODSA), the College has been collecting information about Direct Owners and Indirect Owners (directors, officers and shareholders) as part of the annual pharmacy license renewal process.
Up until this point, information about trustees has not been collected, as trustees were not initially considered to be indirect owners and, as such, were not subject to the ownership requirements under PODSA.
ActionADE is a clinician and researcher driven software application that will allow care providers in hospitals to document patients’ adverse drug events (ADEs) and communicate patient-specific information about ADEs to the community via PharmaNet. By presenting patient-specific information about ADEs, we aim to prevent the re-dispensation of medications that previously caused harm.
Earlier this year, there was a bit of a buzz on Twitter regarding pharmacies that sell homeopathic products. An Ontario health researcher caused quite a stir, criticizing a pharmacist for recommending a homeopathic product to treat her child’s fever.