Windsor pharmacist Natalie Packer had the following letter to the editor published in today’s Windsor Star:

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Murgic’s concerns over the pending threats to community pharmacy. There is no greater fulfilment than that obtained through collaboration with patients, empowering them to achieve their optimal health outcomes.

As pharmacists, we already feel pressured to focus on efficiency and speedy service. What is lost here, however, is the value of each patient as an individual.

We are trained to help address each individual’s concerns by actively listening to them and engaging them in their own care. Ultimately, this ought to reduce the workload on physicians, with pharmacists taking up the brunt of education of patients.

Ideally, our future will encompass a model where a patient-centred team of collaborators, including professionals from all disciplines, is standard. With proposed cutbacks, this model will be impossible.

It is sad to imagine that my career could become strictly volume-focused, where viability will be strictly dependent on the number of prescriptions filled. Reductions in staff will be imminent and time spent with patients will be diminished, if not gone completely.

I am determined to prevent this from occurring. I hope that the government can see how passionate we are about this issue.

We are professionals but even more so, we are individuals, too. Just like our patients, just like the members of Parliament. We merely want to help people but we need Ontario’s support to ensure this can happen.