Helping Québec Pharmacists Seize the Vaccination Service Opportunity: The Pharmacy Best Practice Workshops

Abstract

Vaccinations are a safe and effective way to protect against infectious diseases. The World Health Organization estimates vaccines have saved more lives than any other interventions and every year about two to three million deaths are averted worldwide through immunization. To improve vaccination coverage, pharmacists have been increasingly involved in immunization roles in their communities-as advocates, educators, and immunizers. Community pharmacy-based vaccination services have increased both in the number of immunization providers and the number of sites where patients can receive immunizations. In Canada, health care is under provincial legislation-and so, there are distinct differences in scope of pharmacist practice across the country. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, in Québec, Canada's second-largest province, pharmacists did not have the authority to administer vaccines. To help prepare pharmacists in Québec to become immunizers, we developed and deployed a series of accredited workshops. In these facilitated workshops, pharmacists were able to share best practices that may lead to providing effective vaccination services, identify common competency gaps, discuss effective patient communication skills, and determine how to target the most vulnerable population groups. Participants were also asked to evaluate the workshop. Our results indicate the evaluation was very reliable in measuring participant satisfaction (Cronbach's α = 0.94) and pharmacists commented that the workshops' learning outcomes exceeded their expectations, and the topics covered were relevant and applicable. The evaluation also asked participants to identify weaknesses of training, so future educational interventions can be planned accordingly. We believe this work will contribute to the continual growth and advancement of the pharmacy profession in Canada.

Keywords: education; immunization programs; pharmacists; vaccine hesitancy; vaccines; workshop training.

Figure 1

Workshop structure and content. The structure of the workshop was organized into four segments: (1) a refresher providing an overview of vaccine-preventable disease and National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) guidelines, (2) a set of clinical cases showcasing exemplary patients that may benefit from vaccinations, (3) an overview of our fieldwork and findings on effectively implementing pharmacy-based immunization clinic and common competency gaps to avoid, and (4) a roundtable discussion with pharmacy owners on the evolution of their profession.

Figure 2

Identified competency gaps and their introduction into the workshop training modules. From our fieldwork, it was apparent that pharmacists had four major competency gaps: (1) effectively managing patients during scheduled national and provincial vaccine days, (2) identifying vulnerable patient populations, (3) year-round management of a pharmacy-based vaccination clinic, and (4) managing allied health care workers (i.e., immunization nurses, pharmacy technicians, etc.) and integrating them into the workflow. Various strategies and solutions to close these competency gaps were identified and introduced into the workshop training modules.

Figure 3

Observed exemplary best practices from the community. From our fieldwork, we observed common pitfalls that a pharmacy-based vaccination practice should avoid and the best practices from exemplary clinics. Based on these observations and on data obtained from the literature, we propose the following ways to better integrate vaccination services into a pharmacy-based vaccination clinic and improve existing clinics to respond to the needs and barriers of patients more adequately.