ESTEVAN — Trisha Lee-Karcha has been recognized for her efforts to ensure the pharmacy at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Estevan continues to meet the needs of patients.
Lee-Karcha won the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacy Systems Saskatchewan branch’s Pharmacy Technician of the Year Award during a Nov. 7 awards banquet, annual general meeting and education sessions.
In an interview with SaskToday, Lee-Karcha said it usually goes to a technician who goes “above and beyond” for patient care. She added the recipient usually has a lot of experience and is involved with their profession.
“I’ve been a technician for a long time, and I’ve been working at the hospital at St. Joseph’s since 2014,” she said.
During the past year, she said there were were challenges associated with maternity leaves and other staffing issues, so she was the only person who could mix the chemotherapy for cancer patients for an extended period of time.
“Those patients are very important for me,” said Lee-Karcha. “I’ve lost my mom to cancer and my father-in-law to cancer, so I really try to go above and beyond so that people can get treated close to home, instead of having to travel for their treatments.”
Each year at the conference awards ceremony, she said she looks forward to hearing about the award winners and all that they do, so she was “pretty honoured” and surprised to be nominated, and “really honoured” to be the recipient.
Lee-Karcha started as a pharmacy technician in 1999, falling into the job after she graduated high school. Back then, she said it was a different profession. She wasn’t regulated or licensed by any governing body; she believes she would have been considered a pharmacy assistant.
Then in 2017, she said licensing began in the province, so she had to go back to school and take four condensed classes for pharmacy technicians who were already practising but had outdated schooling.
“And then we had to write our national Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada licensing exams, and then we had to write a law exam with the province of Saskatchewan in order to get our licence,” she recalled.
Lee-Karcha noted pharmacy technicians are in charge of drug preparation, and it’s different in a hospital than a community pharmacy. In the hospital, they’re responsible for ordering, packaging and supplying the drugs.
“Sometimes that means having to make IV medications, it means … creams, all kinds of things, different oral solutions, and then we also do the checking of a lot of the products and a lot of the technical functions, so entering the orders from the doctors or checking orders from the doctors, checking preparations that have been made,” she said.
In the community, pharmacy technicians are in charge of a lot of insurance billing, and they distribute drugs all over the hospital to the different wards.
St. Joseph’s also has a community oncology program, with a list of drugs that are less high-risk and can be delivered to St. Joe’s so patients don’t have to go to the Allan Blair Cancer Clinic in Regina.
Lee-Karcha said she appreciates how the job brings a lot of diversity, as she’s always doing something different. Sometimes she’s asked to help in emergent situations. She likes the patients, the people at the hospital and the different health professions she encounters.
“I like that it’s always changing and evolving. There’s always new things we’re learning to do, or new responsibilities that we’re getting, so it’s really rewarding to always have that life-long learning and getting better at your profession,” she said.
She also enjoys helping people feel better when they are going through their worst times, and having a hand in taking care of them.
St. Joseph’s Hospital executive director Candace Kopec, speaking at the St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation’s Festival of Trees gala on Nov. 15, congratulated Lee-Karcha on the award and thanked Lee-Karcha for her commitment.
“Trisha has been working overtime. If she’s going to take a week of holidays … she goes in on the weekend to make sure everything is prepared, and because of that, not one person has missed a chemotherapy treatment,” said Kopec.
Lee-Karcha is also a small hospital representative on the Canadian Society of Health Systems provincial board. She noted there is traditionally more representation from larger centres. She is also part of the education committee, which is looking to create awareness about the importance of technicians.
