Pharmacists Manitoba

Adverse Reaction Reporting: Your Role in Patient Safety

This session will define the role of health professionals and Health Canada in the process of reporting suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to health products to help minimize risks, including how to report and what type of reactions are most crucial to report. Information on mandatory reporting of serious ADRs by hospitals will be presented including using case studies and statistics. Health Canada’s response, treatment approval and monitoring to date regarding the COVID-19 pandemic will also be discussed briefly at a high level.

Claire Harland, BSc (Pharm), BA (Kin), Regional Coordinator | Canada Vigilance

Claire Harland has been working as a Regional Coordinator serving Manitoba and Saskatchewan as part of Canada Vigilance since December 2020. The Canada Vigilance Program (CVP) is Health Canada’s post-market surveillance program that collects and assesses reports of suspected side effects to health products that have been submitted by health care professionals, consumers, market authorization holders (the manufacturers), or distributors. Prior to joining Health Canada, Claire was a clinical and dispensing pharmacist at a non-profit community health clinic that serves the inner city residents of Winnipeg. Claire is also a veteran of the Canadian Forces where she worked as a Pharmacy Officer. She joined the Canadian (Regular) Forces while studying at the University of Saskatchewan and completed a hospital residency after graduating, where she worked in various medical specialties. In addition to a pharmacy degree, Claire also completed a degree in Kinesiology and Applied Health.

Sponsored by

Opening Minds, a division within the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), is the largest systematic effort in Canadian history focused on reducing stigma related to mental illness. Established by MHCC in 2009, it seeks to change Canadians’ attitudes and behaviours toward people living with mental illness to ensure they are treated fairly and as full citizens with opportunities to contribute to society like anyone else. Over 700,000 people have been trained in either Mental Health First Aid or The Working Mind, world-class evidence-based mental health training programs put forward by Opening Minds.

In this presentation you will learn about:

(1) Foundational concepts like the mental health continuum and the big 4 coping strategies and how they reduce stigma and increase resilience in a workplace environment

(2) Evolution and impact of The Working Mind mental health training program designed for employees and leaders

(3) Specific adaptations for Healthcare providers and First Responders

(4) Stories of recovery through contact-based education

You will leave this presentation feeling inspired with tangible tools to take forward to begin changing the culture on mental health within your workforce.

Resource Links:

Resource Hub: Mental health and wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 Resources: Healthcare Providers

Healthcare Providers

Micheal Pietrus, Director, Opening Minds & MHFA Canada

Micheal Pietrus is the Director of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s international award-winning anti-stigma initiative Opening Minds. In February 2015, Opening Minds received the Innovator Award from the organizers of the 7th Together Against Stigma Conference in San Francisco. He is also the Director of Mental Health First Aid Canada.

Under Micheal’s leadership, the Commission launched Opening Minds, its anti-stigma/anti-discrimination initiative in 2009, which is the largest systematic effort to reduce the stigma of mental illness in Canadian history. He was appointed Director of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Canada in July 2015.

Micheal and his team of researchers worked with public safety organizations across Canada to develop The Working Mind Program for First Responders (formerly known as R2MR). This evidence-based program has been shown to be effective at reducing stigma, increasing resiliency and improving mental wellness. To date more than 100-thousand police, fire and EMS personnel across the country have taken the training.

He has presented on his team’s research and TWM for First Responders at conferences in Canada, U.S., Europe and Australia.

Working with researchers and police trainers, his team has developed a new MHFA program specifically designed for law enforcement officers. The OPP are the first police service to operationalize the program.

He is a co-founder of the Global Anti-stigma Alliance, which is composed of more than 20 international organizations working to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. Micheal is also a founding member of a South American anti-stigma consortium. It is membership includes researchers from medical schools in Chile, Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.

He is a former member of the Board of the Alberta Lieutenant Governor’s Circle on Mental Health and Addictions.

Micheal was also a Director with the Alberta Mental Health Board.

Stress can affect many are of our physiological pathway in our body and understanding the effects and how to support and modulate it will have far better result for our patients. This presentation will discuss how stress effect these different physiological pathways and nutrients and how to modulate these pathway by stress management, food and nutrients to improve our patients’ physiological function hence improving better outcome with or without current drugs therapies that your patient may be on.

Dennis Wong, B.Sc. Pharm., FAARFM, CCN, ABAAHP, IFMCP

Since Dennis graduated from university in 1990, his goal is to be able to practice in a pharmacy setting that will allow him to concentrate on patient centered care. With the opening of his own pharmacy in 1997 together with his wife Cindy Yap-Wong, who is a pharmacist also, he has been able to tailor his practice to the need of his patients and the community that they serve.

They became a member of Professional Compounding Centers of America (PCCA) in 2001 so that they can learn advanced & specialty compounding techniques to fulfill the need in the community with their compounding skills. They have gone on to study and learn Functional Medicine approach of treating chronic disease attending many seminars provided by PCCA from 2001 to 2004 to enhance patient care in their pharmacy. With those training and expertise that Dennis has been consulted by Manitoba CancerCare Pain & Symptom Management Clinic at St. Boniface General Hospital and Health Sciences Centre to help solve many difficult patients' issues and became the integral part of the patient care team.

In 2005, he started his fellowship training with American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine group in area of Anti-Aging, Regenerative & Functional Medicine and received his Advanced Fellowship certification in 2007 as part of the first fellowship graduation class. Dennis also achieved Diplomat certificate with American Board of Anti-Aging Health practitioners in 2007. He and Cindy then went on to train in area of clinical nutrition and became Certified Clinical Nutritionist in 2008. In 2015 Dennis became advance certified practitioner in Functional Medicine through Institute for Functional Medicine.

Since 2004, Dennis has been providing comprehensive consultations to many patients and have been able to help many solve their chronic health issues. Dennis also has been invited to guest lecture for pharmacy graduating class of 2005 to 2007 in the area of unique practices session and also was appointed as clinical lecturer for 2009-2010 and taught part of the Natural Health Products course in areas of Cardiovascular, GI & Cancer therapy.

Dennis has won Bonnie Schultz Memorial award for Pharmacy Practice Excellence in Patient Care in 2004, preceptor of the year award by Faculty of Pharmacy, U of M in 2006 with his co-worker Bev Eros, Wyeth Apothecary award in pharmacy compounding in 2009 and selected as Canadian Compounding Pharmacist of the year by Professional Compounding Center of America (PCCA) in 2011.

Currently Dennis and Cindy own and operate 2 CinDen pharmacies, CinDen Nutritionals, professional grade nutritional supplement company and in their spare time, they enjoy their family time with their 2 sons, Timothy (15) and Christopher (13).

A year ago, virtual care, wearables and digital therapeutics were all concepts that seemed to be impossible to reconcile with the traditional role of pharmacists. With COVID-19, we have seen a rapid adoption of these innovations in the health care field. What opportunities do they create for the profession? How can they be implemented? What are the challenges to overcome to deploy these new tools in the day-to-day activities of pharmacists?

During this session, we will discuss the following:

- Telepharmacy
- Digiceuticals and medical mobile apps
- Connected medical devices
- Digital phenotype
- Big data

Roger Simard, Bsc.Phm

A pharmacist by training, Roger Simard rapidly veered towards the business world. He was a pharmaceutical representative, then Sales Manager at Genentech, the first biotechnology company to launch a recombinant-DNA therapeutic on the market. At the beginning of the Internet in 1995, he co-founded Conceptis Technologies, the company that launched the first interactive online medical education program in 1998. In 1999, Roger founded the portal www.theheart.org with Dr. Eric Topol, the author of “The creative destruction of medicine”, “The patient will see you now”, and “Deep Medicine”. After selling the company to WebMD in 2005, Roger re-certified as a clinical pharmacist and founded Pharmacy 3.0 in 2014 to harness the potential of connected health, pharmacogenomics, and pharmaceutical care. He was the first pharmacist to remotely monitor seniors using wearables and connected health devices paired to an electronic dashboard in 2015.

Today, Roger is the Chief Digital Product Officer at the Canadian Red Cross and he advises public and private organizations – including the World Health Organization (WHO) – on health and innovations. He is a speaker at various conferences and member of the Board of Fondation Âges.

COMING SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2021