Local business, Two Pharmacy, has helped fill a void for our Cochrane Urgent Care Centre.

Receiving a letter in early 2018 from Dr Curtis Glenn, via the Cochrane Rotary Club, the local pharmacy decided to help out.

As part of their 'Health for You, Health for Another' initiative, Two Pharmacy was able to purchase and donate two Mini Pumps to our urgent care facility which would provide the medical staff with a new way of administering intravenous medication without relying on the use of mini bags.

In his letter of request, Dr Glenn states the world supply of mini bags had been damaged in a hurricane and from that there is an anticipated two-year shortage. With Alberta currently only having a two month supply remaining and other options/methods for rural health centres deemed as inadequate, he put forth a request for help.

While AHS did provide an intravenous to oral drug conversion table, Dr Curtis says AHS has no budget for new equipment which could solve the problem in other ways.

Linda Walters, Manager of Cochrane Urgent Care Centre says with training now complete the machines will be put to good use. "We had our training sessions with the Smiths Medical rep and we wanted that firmly in place. We had that last week with Darcie and two other RNs plus our clinical nurse educator, so we'll have four RNs that will be out on the unit and on most shifts there will be one of them which was the intent. It won't take long until everyone is familiar with them."

As Cochrane grows, Walters shares a donation like this means a lot. "It is so nice for us to get specialized equipment like this and the Urgent Care has become a busy department with volume and acuity. About a third of our patient population is pediatrics and we get very sick children coming in and when it is still 30 minutes to the Children's hospital it is a long drive."

Dr Glenn says in many cases when children are really sick they don't want to stop introducing meds even for a couple minutes. Now with the mini pumps, children requiring transport with an EMS crew will see no interruption. "(Paramedics) they have their own technology, but the trick is you don't want to necessarily stop the medication for the ten-minute change over to the ambulance, you can just keep it running through the pump."

With budget restraints, receiving a donation through a community partnership enables our health centre to provide a higher quality of care. "The Cochrane Rotary, Kimmett Foundation and Two Pharmacy have all stepped up in enormous ways and made a tremendous difference as to what we have for equipment in Cochrane Urgent Care."

More than just a local shop the pharmacy continuously gives back through in-store transactions. Kelly Kimmett, Owner of Two Pharmacy, shares the initiative is part of the pharmacy's ongoing commitment to making health a top priority for children. "This is part of our program every patient that comes into the store we make a donation towards something either internationally or here in town and this was one of our projects for the fourth quarter and now we're putting them to use."

The syringe infusion pumps cost $3885 each and thanks to the generous donation, Cochrane now has two.

Two Pharmacy's next project is to match Cochrane High School's WE DAY fundraising initiative of building two classrooms in Kenya.