2022 at a glance
- Supporting and engaging with the profession
- Chief Pharmacist Officer
- Pharmacy’s national voice
- In depth: Drug shortages
- Scope of practice
- Education, resources and content
- Conference, Board of Directors & award winners
- Pharmacy Appreciation Month
- Thank you to our partners
Though the COVID-19 pandemic remained a key aspect of our work throughout the year, 2022 gave us the opportunity to refocus our energies on a range of other, often related, issues affecting the profession and Canadians. From providing information, advocacy and resources on drug shortages to embedding diversity, equity and inclusion into every aspect of our work, CPhA remained dedicated to empowering the pharmacy community and advocating for your essential role in health care.
Everything we do as an association is intended to support the profession of pharmacy and the pharmacy teams that play such a critical role in the health-care system. In 2022 CPhA enhanced our engagement efforts, launching a number of new activities aimed at identifying, amplifying and representing the full spectrum of diverse voices that make up our profession and supporting you in the work that you do every day.
Pharmacy Workforce Wellness Initiative
Launched in early 2022, CPhA’s Pharmacy Workforce Wellness initiative is Canada’s first national initiative aimed at addressing the health and wellness of the profession and ensuring that Canada’s pharmacy workforce is able to meet the needs of Canadians. Several key components of this initiative were undertaken this year, including a national mental health and wellness survey, a national virtual town hall, the establishment of the Pharmacy Workforce Steering Committee and the Wellness Task Force and the launch of the workforce planning study, currently being piloted in New Brunswick, which will project future workforce needs and inform similar work across the country.
Indigenous Pharmacy Professionals of Canada
The Indigenous Pharmacy Professionals of Canada (IPPC) is a new Indigenous-led association established to connect and support Indigenous pharmacy professionals and to help all pharmacists provide better care to Indigenous patients. CPhA is very proud to support the work of the IPPC.
Pharmacy-Insurer Principles of Engagement
Pharmacists and patients rely on private insurers to provide access to medications in a timely and affordable way. CPhA worked in collaboration with a range of stakeholders to develop the Pharmacy-Insurer Principles of Engagement. These principles are intended to increase collaboration and engagement with insurers to address major pharmacy pain points and to provide more seamless patient care.
Sharing your voice: Pharmacy Check-in Series
We love meeting pharmacists from across the country and sharing their stories. This year, we caught up with several pharmacists and asked them about their passions and why they do what they do. Meet Kyle Wilby, Roger Tam, Shams Qaend, Afomia Gebre, Esmond Wong, Susie Jin, and Nafisa Merali, and learn about some of the ways they’re supporting patients in their communities.
Pharmacy Claim Standard
The Pharmacy Claim Standard (PCS) is undergoing an extensive update to help develop and implement a claims adjudication system that will serve the profession now and into the future. As Secretariat for the PCS, CPhA is ensuring that the updates required are on target to be completed by the end of this year to be compliant with Quebec legislation. Working with a wide range of stakeholders, we have established a Steering Committee and a Technical Working Group, to continue to move this work forward.
Chief Pharmacist Officer
In her first full year as Chief Pharmacist Officer, Danielle Paes focused on wellness, diversity and engagement, meeting with hundreds of pharmacists and stakeholders and bringing the voice of the front line both to CPhA’s work and to governments, media and the public. Danielle’s CPO Conversations blog was launched this year to share some of her thoughts and experiences with you.
In 2022, we helped connect federal officials to the pharmacy voices on the front lines and worked hard to ensure pharmacists were recognized and heard.
National Call to Action
In January CPhA issued a National Call to Action, calling on governments and regulators to provide additional support to pharmacy teams providing care through the pandemic.
Reputation Survey
Our annual public opinion survey on the role and reputation of pharmacists showed that 94% of Canadians agree that governments need to expand and fund community-based care, including making more health services available through pharmacies.
Speaking Out on Tough Issues
2022 was a challenging year on many fronts. Our team stayed on top of the issues affecting you and your practice and spoke out on issues such as abortion access and violence in the workplace, and we rallied with our international colleagues to support pharmacists in the Ukraine.
Student Loan Forgiveness
CPhA worked with the Canadian Association of Pharmacy Students and Interns (CAPSI) to advocate for the expansion of the Canada Student Loan Forgiveness Program to include pharmacy graduates and residents as a critical recruitment and retention enabler for rural and remote parts of the country. We met with several federal officials and MPs to share the front-line experiences of pharmacists in rural remote areas and share data on tuition fees and debt levels for pharmacy students.
Top 100 Lobbyists
CPhA was recognized by the Hill Times as one of the top 100 Lobbyists in 2022. This list is intended to showcase prominent lobbyists at the federal level based on their reputation and perceived effectiveness, as judged by their peers. CPhA’s government affairs activities in 2021 and 2022 have increased significantly to showcase the tremendous work that pharmacy teams have done throughout the pandemic with a focus on bringing local pharmacists together with their MPs to discuss pharmacy issues.
Federal Government Engagement
CPhA continued our extensive federal outreach program, meeting with government representatives on a variety of topics, including pharmacy’s ongoing contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic, investments in the federal budget, cannabis, pharmacare, pharmaceutical policies and more. Our CPO addressed several standing committees to highlight some of the current challenges pharmacy is facing, and we met with federal minister of health, Jean-Yves Duclos and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam on a number of occasions to discuss the role of pharmacists and how they support the health-care system.
In-depth: Drug Shortages
A series of intense, prolonged and widely publicized shortages of children’s products and medications caused incredible stress on both health-care professionals and the public this year. From the shortage of specialty baby formula to children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen to antibiotics, CPhA has been working hard to represent and support pharmacy teams. On each file, we’ve worked closely with Health Canada and other stakeholders to advocate for pharmacists and produce a range of resources and tools for both pharmacists and patients.
Children’s fever & pain medication: CPhA has represented pharmacists in regular stakeholder calls convened by Health Canada and helped to emphasize the scope of the shortage and its impact on Canadians and pharmacy teams. We worked with the federal government and others to support the importation of foreign products and produced a range of materials to inform and support pharmacy, including a patient resource used by tens of thousands of Canadians, a resource page and Q&A for pharmacists, and more. CPhA also successfully advocated for changes to compounding requirements to further support pharmacists.
Antibiotics: Anticipating the shortage based on US and Australian reports, CPhA played a leading role in collecting information from members and pharmacy groups and urging Health Canada to bring stakeholders together to begin planning efforts to help mitigate this shortage. In addition to representing pharmacists at regular stakeholder calls, we’ve produced a range of resources to support pharmacists, including a clinical tool on therapeutic alternatives to amoxicillin and a resource page.
Specialty baby formula: CPhA participated in several Health Canada working groups to help mitigate the shortage of specialty baby formula and to develop resources for health professionals. In addition to collaborating on a national clinical decision tree resource, CPhA issued guidance to pharmacy professionals to help manage the shortage and developed a resource page that facilitated the communication of a variety of material, including manufacturer and labelling information for imported products, awareness resources and important product information for available products.
Exciting advances in scope of practice and public funding occurred in many parts of the country this year, including the ability for pharmacists to assess and prescribe Paxlovid for patients with COVID-19 in 7 provinces so far. Pharmacists in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick are now receiving funding for many key services they were previously authorized to offer, and we are looking forward to the upcoming expansion of pharmacists’ prescribing authority in British Columbia, Ontario and Yukon. CPhA continues to advocate for pharmacists to be given the authority to practice to their full scope, and to be reimbursed for the critical services they provide. The table below highlights just some of the scope of practice and funding changes made in 2022 to enable pharmacists to better care for patients.
Scope of Practice and Funding
In addition to our materials supporting pharmacy professionals through a number of critical drug shortages this year, CPhA also developed additional resources in other areas and made key updates to our clinical content.
Practice webinars
CPhA hosted 6 webinars in 2022, reaching more than 2500 pharmacists during our live sessions. This year’s topics focused on business continuity, conflict resolution, harm reduction, protecting patients from respiratory infections, preventing COVID-19 in high-risk patients and COVID-19 outpatient therapies, and our entire webinar library remains available for on-demand education opportunities.
Flu resources
The 2022 flu season has been incredibly challenging, with flu cases surging along with COVID-19 and other respiratory infections. Our annual flu survey showed a concerning decrease in the number of Canadians intending to get a flu shot this year, and CPhA provided a series of tools, information and resources to help pharmacists prepare.
Drug and therapeutic content
Our drug and therapeutic content was updated regularly throughout 2022, with frequent updates to our open access COVID-19 content. We introduced new patient infographics, as well as Generic Lists, which provide a quick reference for users to identify all products available for a specific medication and to compare nonmedicinal ingredients. Our clinical team continues to review and adjust our content to identify and address systemic racism in medical literature.
Canadian Pharmacists Journal
Six issues of the Canadian Pharmacists Journal were published in 2022, featuring a wide range of research, practice tools and commentary on pressing issues like combatting health misinformation, pharmacists’ involvement in immunization, counselling on smoking cessation and appropriate staffing levels in pharmacies. Our final issue of 2022 marked the end of an era—after 155 volumes in print, CPJ is going online-only! Evolving as our readers evolve, CPJ Online will continue to be the voice of pharmacy practice research in Canada.
Resource Round-ups
We have grown and updated our series of Resource Round-ups, gathering relevant tools and resources to support you in your daily practice. Check out:
Diabetes Care with CPS
Diabetes is one of the top 5 chronic conditions in Canada, and pharmacists play a key role in providing diabetes care for their patients. This year we took some time to highlight the tools, information and resources available within CPS to help your patients manage their diabetes.
End of an era: CPS Print
After more than 60 years in print, CPS: Drug Information, the most trustworthy drug information publication in Canada, published its final print edition in January. CPS will continue to be updated and available online and on mobile.
Recommendation Program
We were pleased to launch the CPhA Recommendation Program in 2022, a new initiative that provides a recognized designation for products and services that are designed to assist in pharmacy practice or whose claims have been validated by CPhA in terms of a health benefit for patients.
In June we were thrilled to host the Canadian Pharmacy Conference 2022: Pharmacy Rising. More than 250 pharmacy professionals from across the country came together in Ottawa for inspiring keynote speakers, thought-provoking perspectives and the opportunity to look at both where we’ve been and where we’re going next.
Board of Directors
At our conference, CPhA thanked outgoing Chair Christina Tulk, and welcomed the 2022-2023 Board of Directors. Under the leadership of new Chair Shawn Bugden and Vice Chair Annette Robinson, the CPhA Board remains dedicated to guiding the work that CPhA does on your behalf and ensuring that the voices of our members and stakeholders are heard and considered in our decision-making processes.
2022 CPhA
Awards
Canadian Pharmacist of the Year
IS YOU!
CPhA Centennial Leadership Award
| Anmol Sooch, University of British Columbia | Rachel Hanson, University of Alberta |
| Lauren Lueken, University of Saskatchewan | Christine Vaccaro, University of Manitoba |
| Christine Tan, University of Toronto | Mayur Tailor, University of Waterloo |
| Kevin Demers, Université Laval | Olivier Landry, Université de Montréal |
| Donna Mbamy-Conci, Dalhousie University | Jacob Drolet, Memorial University |
Pharmacy Appreciation Month
In March, CPhA celebrated Pharmacy Appreciation Month, thanking pharmacists across the country for their ongoing efforts for their patients and their communities. This year’s campaign included the 31 Days of Pharmacy social media campaign, the #MyFavePharm patient contest and a special thank you from federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos. Thank you pharmacy!
CPhA is grateful for the ongoing and continuous support of our partners and stakeholders. We thank you for your partnership and your dedication to the profession of pharmacy.
Organizational Members
Pharmacy Network
Organizational Affiliates
Webinar & Initiative sponsors
Canadian Pharmacy Conference 2022 sponsors
