Abstract
Kaye Andrews (Calgary, Alberta)
Kaye Andrews graduated from the University of Alberta with her BScPharm just 5 years ago. Now she's leading an innovative project to integrate pharmacists into the Calgary Rural Primary Care Network (CRPCN) — a network of 80 family physicians serving 130,000 people in 10 rural and suburban communities surrounding Calgary.
The “Integrating Pharmacists into Primary Care Networks” project is breaking new ground. The CRPCN is one of the first large primary care networks in the province to bring pharmacists into its collaborative care model. The research goal is to analyze how this integration affects drug therapy outcomes and to provide pharmacy best practice models for application to other PCNs.
Ms. Andrews spends 40% of her time providing clinical care at the Foothills Family Medical Centre in Black Diamond and the other 60% as the clinical and administrative lead, responsible for hiring and managing the activities of 5 other pharmacists and for the overall integration of the pharmacy role.
The pharmacists' tasks include structured medication reviews, collaboration with nurses in chronic disease management, and provision of drug information services to family physicians and other team members. “Our pharmacists are integrating well into the communities,” says Ms. Andrews. “We are establishing the referral process and the channels of communication, as well as the areas that are most appropriate for their involvement. We want the pharmacist to step in where there are care gaps and the needs vary with each community.”
Ms. Andrews was well suited to her responsibilities, as she already had experience in primary care. As part of another project called APTCare, she developed her primary care pharmacist role with a team of nurse practitioners and family physicians in Carp, Ontario, near Ottawa. Her job included providing assessments through home visits and medication reviews for patients, many of whom were elderly with multiple chronic conditions. She is the co-author of a paper being written about the impact of the APTCare project, which found a 10% improvement in the quality of care.
“I find it very rewarding to work as part of a team of professionals who each have a role to play in advancing care for a patient,” she says. “I always wanted to be involved in follow-up and monitoring, and to have the opportunity to build relationships with patients. I value that continuity.”
This young pharmacist is making her mark in other arenas as well. She represents pharmacists on Alberta's interdisciplinary clinical working group helping to advance the provincial electronic health record, Alberta Netcare, and is a member of the CPhA Membership Advisory Network. And Ms. Andrews was just elected for a 3-year term on the Council of the Alberta College of Pharmacists.