While each pharmacist undoubtedly tailors their approach, we believe there is an optimum somewhere between the extremes of spending hours teaching patients how to interpret primary literature, and spending a few seconds just reading what the prescription label says. Our goal is to help you convey critical drug information to patients without losing their attention, while still allowing you to customize your method.

Our Cue Cards are thoroughly referenced. However, rather than burying you with hundreds of references, we take questions directly through our chat or via email (info@concisecuratedcounselling.com). This typically involves directly providing primary literature, if requested.

We have found that many pieces of information that are critical to the patient is often absent from monographs. For example, at which point in time should a patient consider a medication a failure? To find this critical snippet, one often needs to scour clinical guidelines or several wordy references.

We plan on expanding, but currently there is a focus on drugs commonly encountered by community pharmacists in Canada.

The "DIs/CIs/Cautions" section of the Counselling Cue Cards, which includes drug interactions, contraindications, and cautions relating to that specific drug, includes only what you would need should something come up during counselling on that specific medication. Of course, drug interactions are already mostly done for you via Pharmacy Management Software, so only critical ones are listed, and we also never list a rare condition for which patients would clearly be constantly on guard when interacting with the healthcare system in case there is a conflict with their condition. This mostly includes conditions you have likely never encountered in practice (e.g. Hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase deficiency, Phenylketonuria), or those you would almost never face in a community pharmacy setting (e.g. aseptic meningitis, critical illnesses). We also will never bore you with redundancies (e.g. DI with a medication in the same class or category, hypotension with antihypertensives, anuria for a med that works on the kidneys, etc).

We will not list a mechanism of action if it would be redundant (e.g. lowering anxiety for a benzodiazepine, reducing psychosis in antipsychotics, etc), or if it is unclear/unknown (many NHPs). In the former case, take a look at the indication (it should explain what the drug does). Also, keep in mind that we use "mechanism of action" slightly differently than conventional usage: rather than addressing pharmacology, we indicate how it works for the patient (effect), which we feel is more relevant to counselling. If the MOA would be quite wordy, we sometimes list it under "pros" (green highlight), e.g. bisoprolol reduces HF mortality and hospitalizations. Contact us with any feedback/suggestions if you think we can improve this aspect of our Cue Cards.

We continuously (rather than in a scheduled manner) review new evidence and update relevant counselling pearls accordingly. This process is conducted primarily by practicing pharmacists, and is done both internally and externally. We do not use Artificial Intelligence to create content.

We continuously (rather than in a scheduled manner) review new evidence and update relevant counselling pearls accordingly. This process is conducted primarily by practicing pharmacists, and is done both internally and externally. We do not use Artificial Intelligence to create content.

Yes we do! Simply reach out to us (info@concisecuratedcounselling.com) with your student number.