Honouring the 2023 Wellspring Award winners

This year’s Wellspring Award winners were honoured at a virtual celebration hosted by The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy in late October.

Kim Abbass

Heba Bani

Steven Kary

Thanks to award grants from CFP, Wellspring winners Kim Abbass, Heba Bani and Steven Kary are well on their way towards fulfilling goals in furthering their education and helping cultivate future pharmacy leaders.

Abbass, Eastern Zone Clinical Coordinator Antimicrobial Stewardship and Pharmacy Practice at Nova Scotia Health, is in the midst of completing a comprehensive program through the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ Pharmacy Leadership Academy. She spoke to the tremendous learning she has already experienced through the seven-course curriculum. “With those skills and abilities [acquired], I hope to help effectuate transformational change and progress towards leadership,” she said. “Also, I’d like to focus on sharing my knowledge and experience and paying it forward.”

Like Abbass, Bani (founder of The Migraine Pharmacist) is using her Wellspring grant to further her education and skills, with a Masters in headache disorders from the University of Copenhagen. As the only pharmacist accepted into the program, she has had the opportunity to not only learn “a lot about managing migraine,” but has been able to show how pharmacists can support migraine patients. “I am currently working on my thesis, and with four major institutions on a position statement on the role of pharmacists in managing migraine in the community.”

A Clinical Instructor at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, Kary is completing his Master of Health Administration through the University of Regina and will then develop a leadership-focused experiential learning rotation for fourth-year pharmacy students. Although there a wealth of opportunities within Saskatchewan already that help to develop leadership among students, he said there are also numerous preceptors who could implement more given the right structure. “I hope to that I can help support more pharmacy students to become leaders regardless of what their future areas of practice are,” he said.

Keynote and 2022 Wellspring Award winner Janice Yeung spoke to the impact her award grant has had in supporting the development of a regional practicum model, which will give PharmD students at the University of British Columbia an opportunity to get unique pharmacy experience within selected rural/remote communities.

In developing this new model, Yeung and her team met with community and hospital pharmacists within these potential placement areas to better understand the resources and supports needed. “We are piloting our first iteration of this model in May 2024 in the interior region of B.C. and will complete a formal evaluation that will help inform the ongoing development, refinement and potential expansion of this model,” she said. “I’m very excited to implement this novel placement model within the UBC Entry to Practice Doctor of Pharmacy (E2P) program within the upcoming year.” Learn more about the E2P placement model.