University of Waterloo professor planning to teach rural healthcare to pharmacy students through Gateway research institute
By Susan Hundertmark, December 20, 2010, The Huron Expositor
Pharmacy students from the University of Waterloo will soon be receiving more opportunities to learn about rural medicine and to do research in rural areas thanks to a growing partnership with Gateway Rural Health Research Institute in Seaforth.
Dr. Feng Chang, assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Waterloo, is hoping to establish a course in rural health that would build a network with healthcare providers throughout Huron, Perth, Bruce and Grey Counties.
"I don't think anything like this is offered anywhere else in Canada," she said during a recent phone interview. "For me, the primary focus is on pharmacy but I'm hoping it would become more integrative and involve other allied professionals as well."
By concentrating on an expanded scope of practice for pharmacists, Chang is hoping the workload for local family doctors will be reduced.
"If pharmacists are adequately trained, they should be able to carry out disease management," says Chang.
She is also looking into ways to provide a variety of services that might not be readily available to rural patients, such as sleep clinics and memory clinics.
"Technology is one thing we can use in a rural area. With high speed internet, we can provide more education long-distance and we can try a telepharmacy clinic where you don't need someone who's physically present," she says.
In the new year, Chang is hoping to set up meetings with local stakeholder groups to determine local needs and prevalent diseases to determine the resources needed.
Chang says she also expects there will be research opportunities for pharmacy students in a rural setting.
"We will be doing research that will be worth sharing with other groups out there at conferences and to government so that other communities can model what we're doing. The research from a rural setting will be unique since almost all pharmacy practice models and medical management models are based in an urban setting," she says.
Once she plans her teaching modules and gets organized, Chang says she hopes to spend three days a week teaching in Seaforth, which will gradually see more and more pharmacy students coming into the area.
She says she is also submitting a funding proposal to run multiple projects in the area.
"Over the next six months, we hope to begin a roll-out to the community with a new service or clinic, depending on the needs of the region and which ones we are successful at funding. We're hoping to build sustainability into multiple projects so they can continue after the project is over," she says.
Gateway president Gwen Devereaux says Chang will be coordinating the pharmacy students who are already coming into the area on placements as well as offering new programs in rural medical training.
"In time, she'll be able to do lectures here at Gateway on site as well as integrating learners into our rural setting and working on rural health research," she says.