Care and expertise – in action

Greg Wells started his career in a retail pharmacy, but after the first year, he felt he needed to be in an environment that would continue to enrich his education and knowledge. He applied for and won a position at one of Winnipeg’s teaching hospitals, where he worked in neonatal and paediatric care. “I learned a ton, which was exactly what I wanted,” he says.

Eventually, Wells took a year off to travel. But when the year ended, he realized he wasn’t quite ready to return to a Canadian winter. Wells moved to the Caribbean to work in a small hospital in the Cayman Islands, and ended up staying for 10 years.

Cayman’s distance from the nearest mainland hospital meant that Wells was required to be something of a “jack-of-all-trades,” he says. “There was no referring hospital to send patients to on the island—we were it. We did everything: from chemotherapy to something called total parenteral nutrition, to making sterile eye drops for patients.”

“With the ever changing and expanding role of Canadian pharmacists, clinically monitoring patients has become much more important than ever before,” says Wells.

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Wells and his wife have a blended family of nine children, so after work, he’s busy with home life, cooking and watching their various sporting games. But he’s also disciplined about carving out time for his own fitness. A triathlete, Wells trains at Winnipeg’s Reh-Fit Centre in the winter and at the family’s cabin at Clear Lake in the summer, bicycling, swimming and running.

Wells demonstrates that preference for intense action at work, too. Express Scripts Canada’s unique pharmacy services make it possible to provide a deeper level of care and patient education, and he particularly enjoys the opportunity to help patients by investigating clinical problems for them.

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“With every prescription, I look at the complete patient profile and make sure that everything fits together. I contact patients with any questions that might come up as a result, and really encourage them to phone us with their questions. They can do so at their leisure throughout the day—as I’m always saying, ‘that’s what we’re here for.’ ”

Prescription delivery and the ability to speak with a pharmacist any time of the day or night makes it easier for patients to take their medications according to their doctor’s instructions, which makes it more likely they’ll get the full benefit of their treatment and experience optimum health outcomes, Wells notes. “When people are aware of what they’re taking, and why they’re taking a medication, they’re a lot more likely to take it as directed.”