Attending the 44th Annual CSHP Banff Seminar

by Kim Fehr, RPhT

Dear fellow PTSA members,

I recently attended the CSHP seminar located in Banff, AB. It was my very first CSHP conference! I was super excited to attend the key note speaker session! If anyone was a teenager in the 90’s, you’ll know these names. They were Hal Johnson and Joanne Mcleod. Their talk centered on (you guessed it!) keeping fit and having fun! While the conference offers pharmacist heavy topics of interest. It provided me with helpful insight that will be used in my future interactions with my fellow pharmacist team members. The evening festivities were well executed and full of willing participants. The conference offers so much networking opportunities due to the demographic of attendees!

Hal and Joanne talked about their experience on Canada’s Amazing Race show. They each had their assigned tasks to learn and master prior to the start of the race. Each had their own responsibilities to execute in the race. Yet, there was a moment in the race Hal mentioned that Joanne executed very poorly. She and Hal were getting into a vehicle that Hal was tasked with researching the car maker during their prep phase. Joanne climbed through the driver side to get to the back of the car because she had no clue how to open the back passenger door. This slowed them down because Hal had to wait for her. In hindsight, Hal could have reacted better to Joanne’s lack of knowledge by opening the door for her. Asking more probing questions to better understand why she was doing what she was doing. These behavioral changes can be employed by technicians to compliment our integration with pharmacists.

I got to thinking of the daily dance technicians and pharmacists must do to achieve operational success a workplace demands. If an individual is to be able to fully embrace this integration. It takes understanding of your colleagues approach. How would someone achieve that? A good starting point is to educate yourself on your colleagues approach. Perhaps, seminars that have historically been centered on pharmacist’s clinical behaviour may be a tool to work with. On that note, pharmacists may gain insight from technician education events as well!

Throughout the conference, when I had the opportunity to connect with attending pharmacists. I always received a warm welcome! I provided the same collaborative sentiments in this blog to a member of CSHP when the opportunity presented itself. I feel it was well received and am hopeful that this annual seminar will grow to gather more and more technician support! Overall, I think a technician should consider attending this seminar. Especially, if you’ve been considering different local conferences to attend.