Student-created tool helps Canadian parents safely provide medications to children

‘Simple’ task during Vithya Sivakumaran’s APPE rotation provides important lesson in the impact of community pharmacy on patient safety

A few weeks into Vithya Sivakumaran’s community pharmacy rotation, preceptor Kyro Maseh asked her to complete a simple task – a task that ended up helping families across Canada.

In the fall of 2022, Sivakumaran was in her fourth year of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program and was completing her advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) rotation at Lawlor Pharmasave in the east end of Toronto.

At the time, Canada was experiencing a severe shortage of children’s ibuprofen and acetaminophen, and pharmacies were being bombarded by anxious parents with sick children who had questions about the supply of these medications and how to convert adult doses into children’s doses. Maseh wanted to have a resource that his staff could provide to parents to answer questions and have as a reference at home.

He asked Sivakumaran to create a simple one-page table that helped parents convert adult ibuprofen or acetaminophen into children’s doses based on the child’s weight. She spent a few minutes looking through reputable references to find the information, simplifying the information, and creating the table.

"My training at the Faculty and experience in community pharmacy helped me know where to look to pull the information together quickly.”

“It was just a small task, and Kyro wanted me to do the job quickly and keep it simple for patients,” says Sivakumaran. “My training at the Faculty and experience in community pharmacy helped me know where to look to pull the information together quickly.”

She then posted the table in the pharmacy and didn’t think much about it. But this simple resource was about to have a greater impact than either Maseh or Sivakumaran thought it would.

Parents who came to the pharmacy with questions would be referred to the resource, and many parents took a photo for reference and shared it in parent groups on social media. Maseh also posted the resource on social media, and pharmacists around the country made it available to parents to help them safely provide medication to their children.

“This resource reached thousands of Canadian parents. It was just a simple one-pager that anyone with pharmacy training should be capable of doing it, and it was bizarre how something so simple could have such a huge impact,” says Maseh.

Pharmacy students can have impact on patients during their learning experiences

Sivakumaran says that she was not aware that the table was being widely shared until several weeks later, and she was surprised and pleased that she had being able to help so many people. She says that the experience helped her realize the impact that pharmacists – and pharmacy students – can have on patients. She convocated from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy in the spring of 2023 and is now working full-time in a community pharmacy in Toronto.

“At the time, I was caught up in all the stress of the rotations, and I really didn’t feel like I had much of an impact on people,” says Sivakumaran. “But I think students should realize that in that process of learning and rotations they do have an impact on the patients they interact with. Even if they’re also learning, they’re still helping other people in the process.”

Maseh agrees that the seeing the impact of a simple task was an important learning experience in the value of the community pharmacy and impact of patient-centred care.

“I think that doing something that had such a huge impact on enhancing patient quality of life, potentially saving lives, and preventing hospitalizations, helped Vithya understand the importance of community pharmacy,” says Maseh. “I could see that Vithya saw the gratitude in parents and the impact that something so simple can have on the wellbeing of children and families.”