Virtual demonstration for COVID-19 vaccine preparation viewed worldwide

To support colleagues in pharmacy worldwide, experts at the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy developed a virtual demonstration of how to prepare the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Since July 2021, the video has been viewed more than 60,000 times and has bolstered the pandemic response in countries like Australia where it is being used as part of a training package for Queensland Health’s surge workforce.

“We have used the video as part of the training package created for the surge workforce of health professionals and students for Queensland health, and also in the immunization program for our undergraduate course,” said Lisa Nissen, professor and head of the School of Clinical Sciences at Queensland University of Technology who originally saw the video posted on Twitter.  “We appreciated the easy to understand and pragmatic way the video was presented and were immediately drawn to using it for our training packs. We have gathered a lot of lessons learnt and resources from our Canadian friends and colleagues who have kindly shared them with us,” she said

Lisa Dolovich, Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy said the idea behind creating the video was to share learnings and best practices pharmacists at the faculty had developed while participating in the province-wide mass vaccination effort. "Preparing individual doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine involves several steps and can be tricky. Our experience preparing large quantities at a time for administration in our mass vaccination clinics generated some helpful tips and lessons learned. We created this video to share easy to follow step by step visual instructions and our lessons learned along the way," she said. 

In the video, Thomas Brown, pharmacist and associate professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, takes viewers through the 20-step process to prepare the vaccine requires skill and finesse to ensure doses are prepared reliably and vaccine clinics run smoothly. According to analytics from YouTube, the video has been viewed in Australia, Italy, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United States, among others.

Pharmacy faculty members and students have played a crucial role in supporting Ontario's mass vaccination effort both by preparing vaccinations and delivering them into the arms of patients. "It is critical that those receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are receiving a safe and effective dose of vaccine. Given our experience in this area,  we felt it was important to put effort into developing this video given the need for many different types of educational resources to support the immense scale of vaccine effort worldwide," said Dean Dolovich.