Discussions

Our pharmacist experts share information and ideas to support your daily practice.

In December 2020, Neighbourhood Pharmacies collaborated on a report about community pharmacy’s readiness for COVID-19 vaccinations, which highlighted the value pharmacy teams bring in terms of accessibility, knowledge and trust. Simply put, it just makes sense for your neighbourhood pharmacy to be administering vaccinations. 

Confession time: I love to shop. I love wearing nice clothes. I like nice shoes. I truly appreciate a scarf with a floral design in the exact shade of fuschia as the stripe on my pencil skirt. 

At this point in the pandemic (more than six months after most Canadian adults became eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine), should we declare this level of vaccination coverage as the “vaccine ceiling?”

During the Omicron wave, we’ve been operating under the assumption that most of our readers are all too acutely aware of the devastating effects of Omicron on the healthcare system and everyone in it.

The list was harder to come up with than expected. Many “truths” I thought about were relative and easily challenged. Half-truths at best. So here’s my list of the closest thing to medical truth that I could come up with. 

The problem with working during COVID is these are not abstract ideas: bed closures, people missing vital surgeries and treatments, refugees pouring across the border, escaping exploitation and mistreatment. These are people with names, and faces, beating hearts, bellies that move under my examining hand, tears and frightened smiles. 

The nomination deadline for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine is fast approaching. Besides those for the COVID-19 vaccines, several others are prominent, including the discovery of the cystic fibrosis gene and the drugs to treat the disease.