Health committee  Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Shelita Dattani, and I am the director of practice development and knowledge translation at the Canadian Pharmacists Association, which is the national voice of Canada's 42,000 pharmacists. I

Health committee  Thanks for your question. As I alluded to in my comments, pharmacists are currently engaging in lots of different opportunities, whether it's counselling patients, public health and health promotion, or discussions during immunizations. Pharmacists can definitely have a more im

Health committee  We were not involved on this particular committee. We are a part of the AMS national steering committee.

Health committee  Maybe I'll answer first. I think there's always need for education, both intra-professional and interprofessional. Education in and of itself can be a relatively passive strategy. It's important, but it needs to be coupled with other things. What's worked really well—and Andrew c

Health committee  Thank you very much for your question. You are right that there are a lot of unnecessary prescriptions, particularly—I always think of that 30%—in community environments where practitioners are often a little more siloed and aren't in formal microbial stewardship programs. CPhA

Health committee  In terms of our organization specifically, as I mentioned earlier, we participate and relay the messages of campaigns, like Do Bugs Need Drugs? and Choosing Wisely to help. As I mentioned previously, I think we all feel that patients don't have the understanding they should have

Health committee  I'll start. In terms of costs, I think Andrew is going to be able to answer this question much more effectively than I am, but I'll give you an example. The second most common reason for a drug-related adverse event when a patient presents to an emergency department is an anti

Health committee  Good morning, everyone. I thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Shelita Dattani. I'm a practising pharmacist and I'm the director of practice development and knowledge translation at the Canadian Pharmacists Association. I'm here today on behalf of Canada's

Health committee  Thank you for your question. First of all, pharmacists are not currently involved in dispensing or selling medical marijuana at all to patients, just to clarify.

Health committee  Secondly, I agree with you. Pharmacists are concerned, as others are, about the potential risks of smoking marijuana and all substances, and the toxicity associated with doing that. As others on the panel have mentioned, other forms of marijuana are available. The research is evo

Health committee  For pharmacists dispensing medical marijuana....

Health committee  With other medical professionals and patients, I think we're all aligned on the fact that we agree that there needs to be an increase in the level of robust evidence around the therapeutic effects and risks of marijuana. In spite of that, we've noticed over the last number of yea

Health committee  Thank you, Barry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We know physical distancing is especially important for vulnerable Canadians such as seniors, people with chronic diseases and those who are at particular risk of coming into contact with COVID, which is why it’s critical that we help th

Health committee  As others have, we've had engagement with the chief public health officer through the health care professional forums. I think the engagement really accelerated around COVID around late January, early February. We were quite involved before and since that time.

Health committee  Thank you for that great question. Absolutely. As I alluded to in my remarks earlier, pharmacists are doing everything they can and working within the full scope of current practice across the country, which is unfortunately quite fragmented. In our province, Alberta, pharmacis