By Sheri Monk

Across the country, throughout much of Saskatchewan and certainly in the Southwest, doctor shortages have become a regular fixture of conversation and news coverage. But residents, businesses and government must start preparing for a new medical challenge – a shortage of pharmacists.
In the city, a pharmacist shortage might mean someone needing a prescription refill simply has to shop an hour longer at the mall before it’s ready. But in the rural town, a pharmacy represents a whole lot more than Granny’s blood pressure medication.

It’s unusual in an increasingly urban world, but pharmacy student Rebecca Froese wants to work in a small town, locally owned pharmacy. That’s why she jumped at the opportunity to work at Leader’s Stueck Pharmacy for a five-week work experience.
Additionally, Froese was attracted by the pharmacy’s role in helping to deliver primary healthcare, a philosophy in which all medical professionals work together to care co-operatively for patients.
“The idea of being involved in more of a primary care, clinical setting really appealed to me. This is what we have been learning about and I wanted to see how it’s working in practice,” she said.
Froese, 24-years-old, will graduate from the University of Saskatoon this June from Pharmacy after six years of post-secondary education. Froese has known for a number of years what her calling was and has already lined up a job in her hometown of Winkler, Manitoba at a locally owned, independent pharmacy.
“I chose pharmacy in Grade 11. I loved chemistry and after completing a bunch of personality and career matching tests, I narrowed it down to nursing, medicine or pharmacy. Pharmacy won.”
A lot can happen in five weeks – and that’s not always easy when someone is far from home.
“The hardest part for me right now is being away from my family. Just recently I lost my grandmother and then this past week I became an aunt. It’s hard being away when big things like that happen,” Froese said, also adding the experience has been very positive. “The most fun part has been getting to know all the people in Leader. It’s a reminder of why I love small town life.”
Gord Stueck, the pharmacy’s owner, is happy to have the opportunity to help students on their way to their chosen career, but sure wishes one or two would choose Leader permanently. Stueck’s pharmacy is fortunate to have retained the services of Leah Butt as the company’s second pharmacist.
“Leah originally came here as a graduate student and she stayed here. That was an easy one because her husband has a farm just north of the river,” Stueck said.
Stueck’s involvement in primary healthcare delivery helps attract student pharmacists like Froese.
“These kids nowadays are all taught to work in a primary healthcare team, but unfortunately they don’t get a lot of practise – it’s kind of a new concept and a lot of franchises and store owners resist it because they think it can’t be done. But it can – we’re doing it,” said Stueck. “They’re getting a chance to apply what they’ve actually learned and it’s a real eye-opening experience for them.”
In the primary healthcare role, pharmacists review patient files with different eyes than a physician or nurse. They are trained to spot possible drug interactions and can look for clues in a patient’s blood work as to how effective a particular drug may be.
“We prevent problems before they happen. It serves as a better check and improved care for the patient in that we’re all involved and all on the same page,” said Stueck.
But that all takes time and currently, pharmacists are rarely compensated for going above and beyond. Currently, the intellectual reward motivates many – after six years of education, pharmacists have a lot to offer. That’s one of the hazards of accepting a job with a drugstore franchise right out of school – Stueck says the students are often underutilized.
Medical staff shortages are not just restricted to physicians and nurses – Canada doesn’t have nearly enough pharmacists and using them to their maximum capabilities is critical to retaining talent and skills within the pharmacy field.
“We’re short about 8,000 pharmacists in Canada right now. We need every one of these people that we can get and we’re going to need more of them in the short-term because of the aging population.”
Stueck Pharmacy grasped onto the primary healthcare model immediately and the team’s work was eventually recognized by the province as being model-setting. As a result, in every rural healthcare delivery centre in the province, a primary healthcare pharmacist position was created to go through patient charts once per week. Butt accepted the position for both Leader and for Maple Creek.
However, she will be taking maternity leave in June and though he also has a pharmacy technician on staff, Stueck is worried not only about covering the pharmacy for one year, but what will happen when he’s ready to retire.

“I’m trying to hire a pharmacist and a lot of them have said, ‘Boy, I’d love a job like that, but I wish it was in the city.’ And there’s not a job like that in the city, there’s very, very few,” said Stueck, who has been advertising for another pharmacist for over a year.
So far, there is no interest in the position.
“I’ve done absolutely everything I can and it’s really heartbreaking not to get a single application.
Stueck’s future is uncertain. Though the pharmacy is not listed for sale, he’s keeping his eyes open now for a potential buyer.
“I’m pretty particular about my practice. There’s been interest at various times in the past from people about buying my store. I’m kind of fussy, some of these I wouldn’t sell my store to because I’ve got too much respect for my patients.”

Though the pharmacy is an essential service, it is also a gift store, an office supply store, a make-up and hair supply shop – it is a small town’s answer for all the little items one might otherwise have to leave town for. And many of their owners are getting older. Stueck Pharmacy is still open six days per week, but that’s getting harder and harder to do. Stueck is experiencing health issues and is finding it more and more difficult to work. He deals with chronic back problems and sciatica – intense pain because of pressure or irritation of nerve roots which lead to the sciatic nerve.
“I can’t stand and I can’t sit and I can’t lay down. And it’s just getting worse and worse and worse and the pain makes it so that I can’t sleep. You end up exhausted and you’re in pain all the time. After a while you say, ‘Do I have to do this again?’ Because there’s times I come in here, I don’t want to be here, I hurt too much.”
Some towns dealing with a shortage of pharmacists have been forced to lock their doors on Saturday, something Stueck is reluctant to do because it can hurt the local business community by driving people to go to a city on the weekends to fill prescriptions. In Maple Creek for example, there is no longer a pharmacy open on Saturdays.
Three years ago, Bob Lansdall, owner of Maple Creek’s Lansdall IDA Pharmacy, decided he would no longer open the store on Saturdays. The Badger spoke to Lansdall on Saturday, reaching him at work.
“Just to have some weekends off,” he explained. “I graduated in 1979 and I’ve been in business 27 years this year so I did 24 years of six days a week.”
And, like last Saturday, Lansdall often comes to work anyway – to fulfill an urgent prescription request after being contacted at home or just to tie up loose ends. He says once he closed on saturdays, most patients adjusted and made sure to come in for refills on Friday. And if they needed something on Saturday, Duncan’s Pharmacy across the street was open. The store’s new manager, Jason Williams, also decided to close on Saturdays – which is typically a slow business day for most small town pharmacies.
“It’s nice to be able to go away if you want to on a Saturday or Sunday. I feel bad that it’s going to be all closed up on Saturdays here, but I do have it covered at the hospital, they can get medications that way and if I am home, I do come down. I help people out, I don’t mind doing that,” Lansdall said.
Lansdall says he’s been fortunate enough to have two pharmacists on staff as he requires. But he also says Maple Creek is a bit different because the town currently has two pharmacies – Lansdall and Maple Creek Pharmasave, which until recently was known as Duncan’s Pharmacy.
“I think Gord’s in a different position, he has the only store in town so he has a big business,” Lansdall said, adding for the most part, the demands of running the pharmacy have been manageable. “He’s really into the primary healthcare. Gord’s always at the front of everything and I admire him for that, but he’s probably killing himself too doing that. I don’t know how he finds the time.”
Like Stueck, Lansdall is aging and he recently suffered through a serious personal challenge.
“That’s the only thing, when I’m feeling good, it’s not bad. It’s when I feel rotten, that’s when I start to worry about things like this. A year ago I had a heart attack,” he said, adding he had people jump in to man the store while he recovered.

Lansdall says an pharmacist manpower agency out of Toronto calls him nearly weekly, trying to find pharmacists that can work part-time on an as-needed basis at pharmacies in rural Saskatchewan.
Jason Williams now runs Maple Creek Pharmasave, which was purchased by himself and a number of partners based out of Estevan. Originally from Maple Creek, Williams returned with a wife and one child after being away from the town for longer than a decade. Williams decided to close the store on Saturdays – it had previously been open before the sale.
“It’s not up to me to badmouth what previous owners and such of pharmacies did, but the letter of the law is that if my pharmacy is going to be open, I’m going to be there. And I work to the letter of the law. I get to work at 8 a.m., I leave at 6 p.m., I don’t go for coffee, I don’t go for lunch breaks, neither does Bob (Lansdall). So five 10-hour days a week to me is enough,” he explained.
Williams says if he was able to find a relief pharmacist, he would open every second Saturday, but unless that happens, he wants weekends off.
“It’s funny to me because I have certainly had some flack around town with people saying I shouldn’t be closing on Saturdays, but there’s also a generational thing where people question the family values of our generation and the reason why I’m closing is because I have a 2.5-year-old son who I need to spend time with. To me, I want to have more than a passing in the hallway relationship with my child.”
Williams says rural Saskatchewan is facing physician shortages for that exact reason.

“I have friends, very close friends, who are physicians. And they’re form small town Saskatchewan. And we have a doctor shortage and I asked them why they wouldn’t consider moving back. It would seem to me – and they’re family doctors – it would be the small town doctors who grew up here who would want to live here. They’re saying the reason they don’t do it is because when they go home, they want to be able to spend time with their children as well,” said Williams.
The young pharmacist says part of the reason why medical professionals are reluctant to work in a small town is because they can never really escape from work.
“My friend said he has done locums in small towns and he can’t even go out for coffee without being bothered. And it’s a small town mind-set. Everyone thinks that their emergency is an emergency and it’s unique and it’s OK and you know, it’s not right to be calling doctors at home all the time or pharmacists. The reason why they like working in big cities is because of the anonymity – when you’re off work, you’re not a doctor, you’re not a pharmacist.”

The future of the rural pharmacy is uncertain, but even with an influx of new pharmacy students, small towns will still have to fight the big city lights to snag new graduates. Retiring pharmacists – like rural hotel and restaurant owners are having to face the possibility of not finding a buyer for their thriving business. And after decades of hard work and sacrifice, that’s a depressing retirement party to plan.
“I’m getting tired of working. I’ve been at this for 35 years,” Stueck said.