Lending a hand this holiday season

As the holiday season unfolds, pharmacists throughout Eastern Health are ensuring that essential medications are dispensed, and patient care continues uninterrupted.

For Joshua, a Clinical Pharmacist, this can be harder than normal over the holidays.

“These are the days of the year, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day that are typically days that community pharmacies aren’t open. So that can certainly be a challenge for us when we’re trying to facilitate a discharge.”

With this challenge, making sure everyone gets what they need, means different planning than normal.

“We might need to put more plans in place just to make sure that our patient gets what they need over that time…we need to be a little bit more strategic”.

Joshua works with patients to help them better understand the medications they are taking and the effects they can have on their bodies.

“There can be a lot of anxiety around starting a new medication, it can be life changing,. It’s really nice to be able to sit down with the patient and their family and really explain everything they need to look out for and monitor, to help ease their concerns.”