Starting in 2011, the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists began to make a series of changes to the Pharmacy Act and regulations to allow pharmacists to more fully use their knowledge and skills in their practice.

These changes allowed pharmacists to:
1. Prescribe drugs
2. Administer drugs, including vaccines, by injection
3. Order, conduct, receive, and interpret medical laboratory tests and services

A survey of pharmacists in 2014 revealed that, with the exception of drugs by injection, only 50 per cent of Nova Scotia pharmacists were providing these expanded services. Pharmacists also identified a number of barriers that kept them from doing so.

Two of these barriers were:
1. Their workplace (lack of time, lack of staff, no counselling room, amount of paperwork)
2. Their self-perceived lack of comfort and confidence in the provision of, and procedures for, various expanded services

At the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists’ (NSCP) strategic planning session in 2015, it was agreed that addressing these barriers could be within the NSCP’s mandate of maintaining standards of practice that support optimal patient care. This aligned with the NSCP’s strategic vision that all pharmacy professionals recognize the impact of their roles in the health care system and practise to their full scope.

The NSCP recognized, however, that it would need to give careful consideration to the actions it would take to address these barriers in order to be certain that its work in this area did not cross the line into professional advocacy. The NSCP decided to do research to find out what those actions could be.