Serena Rix, pharmacist

A palliative care pharmacist, Serena Rix strives to increase her knowledge to benefit her patients. She chose to pursue an after-pharmacy Doctorate in Pharmacy in her fifties and a Masters degree in Palliative Care in her sixties. These certifications did not give her any advancement or additional pay, but they greatly improved Serena’s knowledge and ability to care for her patients.  

Serena was integral in pursuing a method to provide subcutaneous methadone to her patients when there are no other viable or reasonable options for pain relief. She had to pursue special access program (SAP) approval from Health Canada, Form B. Serena is the only pharmacist in Canada to do this. She had to jump through multiple hoops to make sure Grey Nuns hospital always has methadone injectable on hand for patients. Palliative patients change and deteriorate unpredictably, and she does not have the luxury of knowing when a patient will not be able to tolerate oral pain relief.

She needed to secure unprecedented future use of SAP approval for her palliative patients when Health Canada decided to end its approval. Serena created a process to ensure she can get patient specific SAP approval for her patients in a timely manner. This often requires her to call Heath Canada on her own time remaining on the phone for hours to make sure she has this approval in place.

Serena advocated for her patients with Connect Care to have a process and files in place to order this product in the system.