If health care is like walking a tightrope, requiring precision, balance and thoughtful steps, then pharmacists and their team are like the net below, ensuring safety for everyone at all times. 

It takes dozens of individuals from various care teams working in tandem to ensure the patients, clients and residents of Providence Care receive proper compassionate care. A vital member of that team is the pharmacist.  

“As a clinical pharmacist, one of our main responsibilities is to do order verification or order review,” explains Providence Care Pharmacist Jing Zhang. “When the doctor or any provider enters medication orders into the system, it will come into a queue as an order to be verified. From there, we have to look through the individual’s information before it’s verified or accepted.” 

The pharmacists at Providence Care Hospital don’t mix medications or sort pills. Their role is focused on ensuring the proper medication is given in the right dosage while considering the individual’s health history. The medication review and patient, client, or resident information Jing needs to verify is extensive and includes dosages, frequency, duration, and the reason behind the medication need. It also includes reviewing and considering the individual’s history and current situation through lab results.  

“We are the gatekeeper of the medication side of an individual’s care plan,” explains Jing. “Additionally, we go to interprofessional rounds to talk about the patient, make suggestions on their medication, go through with the patient any medication they’re currently taking before getting to our hospital and make sure it’s reasonable and appropriate for the patient while making notes to the doctor if we find something could be optimized.”  

It’s a lot of information to review, and because Providence Care is a post-acute health-care organization, most of the individuals receiving care have come from another health-care provider, like an acute hospital. 

“People don’t realize how much work goes on in pharmacy, but there’s a lot,” explains Jing. “Pharmacists work hard to ensure no errors happen, that orders are correct, that people are receiving the right medication at the right time.” 

In December 2024, Providence Care became one of six health-care organizations to launch a new health information system called Lumeo. Lumeo allows these six health-care organizations in southeastern Ontario, many of them acute hospitals, to share electronic medical records, which include lab results, health histories, and appointments. It’s a system that Jing says helps pharmacists get a clearer picture of an individual’s health history faster, without having to rely on handwritten notes or a patient’s memory.  

“We rely on other hospitals’ records and documentation to make sure the people we serve are on the right medications and everything is correct. Before, we had to flip through paper charts. The biggest benefit is that now we’re all on the same system. There are still challenges with that, but now we can easily access a person’s stay at another hospital in this region and see exactly what medication they were prescribed and given, lab results, notes from their physicians, nurses or other allied health professionals; it’s a really big improvement.”  

Jing is part of the Parkside 1 interprofessional team at Providence Care Hospital, specializing in geriatric rehabilitation. Many of the patients Jing works with are experiencing frailty and are at Providence Care Hospital to rebuild strength, increase wellness, and return to the community at a stronger functioning level. Jing explains that working with this patient population requires extra care. 

“With this population, we can see a lot of polypharmacy, meaning a patient on a lot of medications,” explains Jing. “They can have multiple chronic conditions, they might need a lot of different medications to treat them, their care can be complex. Also, because of their age and frailty, they can be sensitive to medications, too. We need to be more cautious with medication use.”    

Lumeo helps paint a clearer picture. 

“Now, with Lumeo, we have a better idea about why a patient was taking a medication and can look to see if there are additional notes, which has been better than reading a paper chart trying to trace through long medical histories.”  

March is Pharmacy Appreciation Month, a time to celebrate the entire pharmacy team at Providence Care—a group of more than two dozen professionals whose impact goes far beyond just pharmacists like Jing. From pharmacy technicians to assistants and support staff, each member plays an important role in ensuring safe and effective medication management. 

Adapting to Lumeo has been a learning curve, and like any new system, it’s not without its challenges. But through it all, the pharmacy team continues to deliver quality care with precision and compassion.