Where a mechanism
becomes a care plan

Research taught me how a pathogen works. Pharmacy is where that knowledge has to survive contact with an actual person — someone with six other prescriptions, a language preference, a schedule, and a reason to be sceptical.

Most of my clinical hours are at a Costco Pharmacy in Laval, in community/retail practice. That is where the day-to-day clinical work actually happens: patient counselling, care plans, follow-ups on blood work we have prescribed, OTC counselling, and patient education and prevention.

Alongside that I spent two summers as a part-time student at the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, within the CIUSSS de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal — preparing and delivering manual-dose medication, doing medication reconciliation, and occasionally shadowing the psychiatric pharmacists. It was a valuable exposure to psychiatric pharmacy, though a smaller share of my overall clinical hours than the retail work.

I have also completed a long-term care rotation, and — early in the pandemic — spent a summer doing clinical triage at a Laval family medicine group. Different settings, same test: can you explain a therapy clearly enough that someone will actually follow it?

Outside Québec, I have volunteered with Floating Doctors in Bocas del Toro, Panama, joining mobile clinics that reach Ngäbe-Buglé communities by boat and on foot — a very different setting from a Montréal pharmacy, with far fewer resources on hand.

Speaking English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Western Armenian has been genuinely useful in both settings — at a counter in Montréal and on a riverbank in Panama.