Shoppers Drug Mart provides additional health care option

Shopper’s Drug Mart pharmacist/owner Christin John, left, and pharmacy manager Megan Kelly, right, take Rebecca Moore’s blood pressure in one of the new pharmacy care clinic rooms at the Tillsonburg location. A wide variety of services are offered in the clinic to help avoid visits to the doctor’s office or emergency department. (Jeff Helsdon Photo)

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

A revamping of the clinic area at Shopper’s Drug Mart aims to enhance health care delivery in Tillsonburg.

Like other pharmacies, Shopper’s Drug Mart can assist the public with a variety of minor illnesses without going to a doctor. These include the ability to write prescriptions for urinary tract infections, skin rashes, tick bites, pink eye, allergies, thrush, acid reflux and muscle aches and pains. This list was recently expanded to include yeast infections, morning sickness, diaper rash, acne, canker sores and threadworms and pinworms.

“It’s not that we are providing different services, but can better do those services,” said Megan Kelly, pharmacy manager.

“A lot of customers don’t know we can do these things,” said Tillsonburg pharmacist/owner Christin John, who is proud she is continuing a local tradition of ownership that started with Jack Whitmore Pharmacy in 1962, transitioned through Big V and eventually to Shopper’s Drug Mart.

A grand opening of the new pharmacy care clinic will be held on Sept. 12 at 10 a.m. It features three dedicated clinical rooms, plus some new equipment to deliver services. It’s hoped the rooms will help highlight that these services are available.

For instance, the clinic can screen for diabetes by scanning for A1c, a blood test that tracks the average blood sugar levels over the past three months.

“It’s as accurate as a lab result,” John said., adding a doctor’s requisition isn’t required for the test and the tests can be performed at more convenient hours.

“There’s a lot of our patients who don’t have a doctor,” Kelly added. “They can come in here and we can help them.”

Lipid cholesterol can be also tracked.

“With cholesterol and A1c, we can screen people for their risk of stroke or heart attack,” Kelly explained. “We can calculate their heart health.”

If a serious condition is discovered, the patient is sent to the hospital immediately.

A wide variety of injections are available, including flu and Covid vaccines, as well as prevention for conditions when travelling. Annually, thousands of people are given these vaccines in the store.

“This will help to do more and do it better,” John said of the clinic rooms.

She said the combination of services offered helps to alleviate pressure in the emergency room at the hospital.

“We identified the need of the community and that a lot of people don’t have a doctor and that’s why we expanded the pharmacy care clinic,” Kelly said.

She is hopeful the number of services pharmacists can deliver will increase in the next few years. Smoking cessation programs was recently added to the list, a program delivered in partnership with SouthWest Public Health.

With the clinical rooms looking similar to those in a doctor’s office, when asked if this was a precursor to a future nurse practitioner clinic, John said she doesn’t have a nurse practitioner lined up but the facility would be ideal.