Development, Implementation and Evaluation of an Advanced Primary Care Pharmacist Pilot Training Program as a strategy to enhance Team Based Care in Canada

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of an Advanced Primary Care Pharmacist Pilot Training Program as a strategy to enhance Team Based Care in Canada

Canada’s 50,000+ pharmacists play a crucial role in the comprehensive delivery of primary care. Recognizing this, a program in alignment with the Team Primary Care (www.teamprimarycare.ca) national initiative was developed to enhance pharmacist skills and knowledge in collaborative care and interprofessional teamwork. This presentation will share results from a mixed-methods evaluation of the program, which revealed the program’s comprehensive approach, and will also discuss lessons learned and next steps related to scaling of the program to train more pharmacists to optimize team-based primary care. 

Speaker: Christine Papoushek

Christine Papoushek is a primary care pharmacist at the Toronto Western Family Health Team.  She holds a Doctor of Pharmacy Degree from the University of Michigan and has over 25 years of experience in providing collaborative care to patients in a Family Medicine setting.  She is an assistant professor with the U of T Department of Family and Community Medicine and is involved with the teaching of pharmacy and medical trainees.  Her practice and research interests involve patient empowerment and engagement, shared decision making, optimal prescribing.  Her passion is optimizing intra-professional and inter-professional relationships to enable team-based care. Christine recently led the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada Advanced Primary Care Pharmacists Training Program, which was one of four subprojects from a federally funded initiative of Team Primary Care: Training for Transformation.  

Discussant: Ivy Oandasan

Ivy is a Professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Family & Community Medicine and Director of Education at the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Her scholarly impact has been in the areas of family medicine education, interprofessional education, team-based care, program evaluation, and health advocacy, which she has published and presented widely and called upon internationally for consultation.