A blueprint for better care

The Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has renewed the Patient Care Process to standardize how direct patient care is taught.

Pharmacists’ scope of practice, particularly in Alberta, is becoming broader and broader, with an increasing number of services offered to meet patients’ diverse health-care needs. In response, the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has renewed the Patient Care Process to standardize how direct patient care is taught and to equip pharmacists-in-training with tools to provide the best possible quality of care.

The process is both a framework for teaching direct patient care skills to students and a tool that can be used in a range of pharmacy practices, explains Jill Hall, a clinical professor in the faculty, director of the PharmD program and co-lead of the Patient Care Process Working Group.

“It outlines the systematic process pharmacists follow when providing care,” says Hall.

The working group that created the document included experts from the University of Alberta as well as representatives from Alberta Health Services and community and primary care practices. A collaborative approach and diversity of voices ensured the document would be both academically sound and relevant to real-world pharmacy practice. 

The process involves a four-stage cycle: Collect Data, Patient Assessment, Plan, and Reassess. Each stage is outlined in the document, which also includes tools like a pharmacy care plan worksheet, a chart for evaluating drug therapy and a glossary of key terms.

As Hall explains, PharmD students are introduced to the Patient Care Process early in their education, first in theory-based courses. “Most pharmacists work in direct patient care, so this will be a fundamental part of the work they do,” she says. 

Students then have an opportunity to explore the process in their pharmacotherapy courses and patient care skills courses, using the framework in real-world situations such as discussing patient cases or doing simulated activities in skills labs. 

“They experience cases with increasing complexity, where the various facets of the care process are broken down. It allows them to better understand and build their process, which eventually becomes innate,” says Hall.

Chris Wright, a 2023 graduate of the PharmD program, was first exposed to the process as a student. “We definitely used it quite often. It was a nice reference to go to,” he says. 

Wright now works as a community pharmacist and has used the process in his practice. He notes it’s particularly helpful with patients who have more complex needs, such as someone presenting with multiple health issues that may be interacting in various ways.

“That’s when I think, OK, we need to sit down and use this comprehensive way to standardize care for this patient so we don’t miss any steps.” 

“I can reflect, go to the Patient Care Process, look at my own process and try to determine what drug therapy problems I might be missing,” says Wright, who is also involved in the Patient Care Process Working Group as a member of the PharmD advisory council. 

He has spoken with pharmacists who have been practising for decades, and they have also commented on the document’s benefits.

“It’s not just for students,” says Wright. “It’s useful for any practising pharmacist.”

The Patient Care Process was first created in 2011, Hall explains, and has been revised several times since then. A substantial revision in May 2025 focused on making the language more inclusive, modernizing some of the assessment tools and adding the glossary of terms.

A few other institutions, including the University of Ottawa’s French-speaking pharmacy program, have already incorporated the process into their pharmacy education. It has also been referenced by the Alberta College of Pharmacy and in the National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities’ Professional Competencies for Canadian Pharmacists at Entry to Practice.

“As pharmacists’ scope of practice in other provinces expands, they’re always really interested to see what we’re doing in Alberta,” says Hall.

She highlights that there will be an article published in the November/December issue of the Canadian Pharmacists Journal that will draw other pharmacists’ attention to the document, provide access to the full text and highlight tools that may be of interest. 

“I would like pharmacists nationally to be aware of the Patient Care Process because I think the way we’ve laid things out is straightforward, regardless of what province they’re in and what their scope of practice is,” says Hall. “There are tools we’ve put in place that would enable a pharmacist or preceptor to support another pharmacist or student in improving their skill set.”