U of T’s pharmacy department got a good opportunity to try out their people skills when Tony Clement dropped by yesterday.

“We’re starting to rely on pharmacists to play a greater role,” said Clement, Ontario’s Minister of Health and Long-Term Care.

The faculty of pharmacy invited Clement to listen to a presentation on how pharmacists are trained at U of T, Ontario’s only university with a pharmacy program.

“My vision is for [pharmacists] to play a much more integrated role for primary care,” Clement added.

That was good news to the faculty of pharmacy. Wayne Hindmarsh, the dean of the program, said the role of pharmacists was changing from being dispensers of drugs to becoming health professionals with a greater impact on patient care.

“We’re perceived to be product-oriented people, business-oriented people,” Hindmarsh said. But the U of T pharmacy program is changing to graduate pharmacists with more people skills, so pharmacists can accompany physicians on their rounds, for example.

The idea, according to the faculty’s presentation, is to reduce the number of patients who die of adverse drug reactions. Currently, 10,000 Canadians die every year because of these drug reactions, which can be caused by giving patients the wrong medications for their ailments, by allergic reactions, or by dangerous combinations of drugs.

“The doctors don’t like it when we call it ‘medical error,’” Clement said.

Hindmarsh said the program aims to stretch scarce healthcare dollars by “preventing hospital admissions” through better prescription practice.

In the spring of next year, the faculty will start construction on a new building at the corner of Queen’s Park crescent and College street. With the new facility in place, the department wants to graduate double the number of pharmacists per year, for a total of 240 once the new building is open.

The pharmacy department also wanted to show off its upgrading program, the International Pharmacy Graduate, which helps foreign-trained pharmacists upgrade their skills to Canadian standards.

Clement said pharmacists will be important in his government’s ongoing healthcare reforms, including family health networks—teams of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals who work together to serve groups of patients.

The idea is that with a more integrated “one-stop” practice, patients will be able to receive round-the-clock care without costly emergency room visits for minor medical problems.

“It’s all about primary care professionals working together,” Clement said.

The minister said he was looking forward to the official release of the Romanow report, a federally-commissioned study of healthcare across the country conducted by former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow.

After listening to the president and vice-president of the Pharmacy Students’ Association, Clement told them they had “made the right choice.”

“We need you and we want you in Ontario. I think you’ll have a satisfying career,” Clement said.

Photograph by Simon Turnbull