New Practitioner Award
Aydan Con
Pharmacist
London Drugs #10
Vancouver
Aydan Con grew up in the Vancouver community of Kerrisdale. His first job was as a cashier in a retail pharmacy near his home, the same pharmacy where the 2024 PharmD graduate now practices as a pharmacist specializing in clinical services.
As with many things in life, his decision to pursue pharmacy had much to do with timing.
“I lived in a neighbourhood by a London Drugs, and I know the care that I could receive at the store. I trusted it as a patient and as a community member, so I thought, as a first job, it would be a very safe place to try,” Con said.
“I knew when I graduated high school that I eventually wanted to go into health care, and as I was working there, I realized that it’s what I always wanted to do. So I applied to pharmacy school right at the beginning of COVID.”
This decision was a perfect match. During Con’s four years in pharmacy school, the profession’s scope of practice in British Columbia experienced an unprecedented expansion. Suddenly, pharmacists were administering the bulk of publicly funded vaccines, the scope for adaptations was broadly extended to cover most medications, pharmacists were enabled to assess and prescribe, and more recently, given the authority to order lab tests.
And here he was, a new pharmacy graduate with a mind brimming with the latest in pharmacy education, who grew up in the neighbourhood, and who, as his colleagues would discover, had the passion and humility for sharing his fresh approach with more experience pharmacists.
Aydan Con (centre) grew up in a community around London Drugs — starting his very first job there, and now practicing as a pharmacist in the same location.
“I will say I got very lucky, this is all happening right now,” Con said.
During his third-year of pharmacy school, his colleagues at London Drugs introduced him to the pharmacy’s internship program, where students were hired onto the team to accelerate their training to become pharmacists. He began taking on a growing portion of clinical services at the store, and soon, provided the majority of clinical services in the team.
And because he grew up in the community, many patients already know him — including one of Con’s teachers from elementary school, now one of his regular patients.
“During school, I realized I wanted to provide that continuity of care where I see the patient every few weeks or months, to get to know them,” Con said. “And actually, one of my patients, my very first one that I met at my current London Drugs, I still see every few months or so. I’ve now met the kids, the grand kids, the whole family and I’ve learned their life story, and I think that’s really rewarding.”
Today, just months into his first year of practice, Con spends about 80 per cent of his time in the pharmacy performing minor ailment consultations, administering medications, consulting with family physicians, and providing other clinical services. He has even developed paper booklets of minor ailment checklists, medication review guides, and adaptation frameworks to help guide colleagues on providing the newer services.
As a way to share his knowledge, Con has developed a series of guides and tools to help his fellow team members navigate the newest clinical services.
And, perhaps as another nod to timing, a hypertension-management study he participated in during pharmacy school has now been picked up by London Drugs — with Con taking a lead role.
“During my second year, there was an opportunity to do a work-learn with the UBC Digital Emergency Medicine department, where we recruited patients in the emergency room and collected data to monitor their blood pressure from home,” Con said.
“They have now partnered with London Drugs for an expanded trial, and once it’s fully operational, I’ll be a pharmacist case manager monitoring blood pressure for a subset of patients at London Drugs, and making adaptations to their medication doses if needed, or consulting with the doctor to add or stop medications. It’s a pharmacist-led hypertension management piece.”
Aydan Con spends about 80 per cent of his time in the pharmacy performing minor ailment consultations, administering medications, consulting with family physicians, and providing other clinical services.
Surprisingly, Con’s background is in music. Throughout high school, he had competed nationally as a pianist and later decided to pursue a dual-degree program in both chemistry and music.
“In some ways, my music training informs my pharmacy practice more than anything else, because in classical music, we’re looking to innovate within some fairly fixed rules, and we have to seek to innovate within the bounds of these rules and create new interpretations,” he said.
“When we look at medication management, there are black and white rules, too, but what are the other things where we can innovate in managing medications to improve the patient’s health outcomes? I knew I picked the right field, because it really ties in all that musical training that I have into a health profession. It’s like a match made in heaven.”
It’s this love for music that continues to inspire him to be the best pharmacist possible. And also his love for his wife, a woman he initially met in music school, and who first encouraged him to apply for a job at London Drugs. She is also training to become a pharmacist and is in the UBC PharmD class of 2025.
“A lot of my inspiration comes from her. She has Type 1 diabetes but she can do everything I can do despite managing a chronic disease. There is no excuse for me not to do everything I can do to the best of my ability,” Con said.
“In music, we're always taught to strive for the unattainable perfection, and I think that carries me here in pharmacy. Because I will never be able to be the best pharmacist for everyone, but I want to be the best pharmacist I can be today, for the patients who are here now.”