A 2024 University of British Columbia PharmD graduate, Ivy Thrasher currently serves as interim pharmacy manager at Thrifty Foods Pharmacy in Campbell River. In addition to their day-to-day practice, Thrasher is working to be a changemaker in increasing access to care for gender-diverse patients.
How did you get your start in pharmacy?
By 10th grade, I decided I wanted to be a pharmacist. I wanted to apply for the pharmacy program at the University of British Columbia, but first wanted to experience what the job might be like, so I applied to London Drugs in Langley and I worked there as a pharmacy assistant for about four years.
The biggest takeaways I had in my first year or two in pharmacy is that you learn a lot really quickly and that pace is kept up throughout your entire career. As a pharmacy assistant, I quickly got to know our regular patients and established trusting relationships with many of them. That was different than other retail and customer environments.
Through this experience, I was also working as a pharmacy assistant during the beginning of the pandemic and it was a great opportunity to see how the industry responded to big and evolving changes and new information.
Since receiving my PharmD in 2024, I’ve been with Sobeys National Pharmacy, and I’m now the interim pharmacy manager at the Thrifty Foods Pharmacy in Campbell River.
What has been the most rewarding thing about your career since you started practicing?
When I first graduated, I had the mindset that I wouldn’t get to use my clinical skills and knowledge outside of a hospital setting. I was delighted to learn that wouldn’t be the case. As pharmacists, we all know how busy it can get and how limited resources can be, but I find that particularly at Sobeys, at least among the pharmacists that I have worked with, they are emboldened to use their clinical skills, to take on new challenges, and to boost each other up.
The most rewarding interactions are definitely when patients have “aha!” moments, where at the end of an interaction the patient discovered something that they hadn’t known, but are now aware of because of that interaction at the pharmacy. You can kind of hear it click in the back of their head, that something now makes sense in a way it didn’t before. When that happens patients get excited about their own knowledge of their care. That feeling is what really drives me at work and is so rewarding.
What kind of pharmacist would you like to be for your patients?
A big part of my journey and drive in this industry has always been seeing gaps in our health-care system and wanting to do something about it. For example, there are still gaps in providing care for our queer and gender-diverse patients, especially when it comes to navigating things like hormone replacement therapy.
As an industry, I’d like to see us address this and embrace our role as medication experts. It’s an emerging field with a lot of information and anecdotal evidence that we have to navigate in order to provide the best care for our patients. It’s a practice area I’ve always found passion in, especially knowing that providing care isn’t just about providing medication. It is very rewarding to fill those gaps in care, especially in more rural areas such as Campbell River.
I’m a part of the 2SLGBTQ+ community myself and I want to bring the lived experience I have to spaces where there might not be as much visibility on gender-diverse care. When patients can see someone that’s part of their community in a position like mine, that can bring a lot of comfort, relationship building and trust to our industry, especially in unexpected places.
What are some ways in which care for gender-diverse populations can be improved in the health-care system?
Many practitioners, prescribers, and pharmacists are still learning about the latest research and newest information. Hormone therapies are complex, including those for gender-diverse patients or for those experiencing perimenopause and menopause.
Over the next five to 10 years, I want to create an interdisciplinary space where pharmacists who are experts in hormone therapy work with other health professionals to manage patients taking those medications, provide education on medication administration, help navigate things like coverage and connect people to resources.
As someone who began practicing at a time when there are significant changes to the pharmacist scope of practice, how do you think the profession will continue to change?
I would love to see more prescribing abilities, for British Columbia to be closer to what we see in Alberta. I would also love to see a growth in collaborative practice, where it is more commonplace for doctors to provide a diagnosis and to recommend therapy in tandem with the pharmacist. Another area where the profession will continue to change is with more interdisciplinary practice in a way where patient care is a conversation among practitioners who agree on a course of action for the patient, rather than a prescription.
What has it been like working in more rural areas of British Columbia, such as Campbell River?
During the last year, I’ve worked all over the Lower Mainland, in Cranbrook, and here on the Island in Nanaimo and Duncan, managing in both Victoria and Campbell River. I am originally from rural Alberta where we have small towns of only a few thousand people. Compared to the Lower Mainland, Campbell River feels like a small town, but is actually a city of more than 30,000 people. Despite the population, it still feels like a very tight knit community. The patients tend to really know the staff in the store and as a pharmacist, you learn many things about your patients, things that sometimes you probably didn’t need to know, but also stories that really help us connect with our patients to build those strong, trusting relationships.
Another really important piece to rural practice for me has really been practicing to my full scope and training. In many of these communities, you serve patients that may live in adjacent towns and don’t have immediate access to care. Many of the family doctors are booked up weeks in advance, and a large role in the community is bridging some of those gaps in care, whether it’s a Minor Ailments consultation or a prescription adaptation.
Do you have any advice you’d like to share with new pharmacy graduates entering practice for the first time?
If I had to give my past self some advice, I would encourage myself to pursue a position that required travel. Moreso than working in a fixed location, I think you learn so much more and experience so much more when you travel to different communities. Everyone has their own way of operating a pharmacy and every community has its own unique needs. By having these experiences in different communities, you get to pick and choose the best pieces to take with you into your own practice.
If you’re on the fence or thinking about travel or taking on these floating opportunities, it’s worth a shot.