Innovator: Building trust, expanding care

Even as a child growing up in Bienfait, Sask., Laura Resler was drawn to the relationship side of pharmacy. “I really admired our community pharmacist and the personalized care he provided,” she says. “He was professional, but also kind and compassionate, and I think that really stuck with me.”Today, nearly two decades into her career, Resler is a trusted pharmacy leader herself, helping transform what community pharmacy can look like in a rural setting. As pharmacy manager, store operator and managing partner of Pharmasave Weyburn, she leads a large multidisciplinary team that has embraced expanded clinical services, collaborative care and one of Saskatchewan’s emerging mental health pilot projects. (She is also the store operator at a small second Pharmasave in Radville, where she oversees operations.)Under Resler’s leadership, the pharmacy has developed a collaborative practice agreement with a local psychiatrist and community mental health team that allows specially trained pharmacists to help manage patients with stable mental health conditions. The initiative is designed to improve access to care in a region that, at one point, had only one psychiatrist serving the whole area.“The community was seeing a very high need for mental health services, but a shortage of psychiatrists in the area,” Resler explains. “Many patients required frequent monitoring, follow-up and clinical support, but timely access was really challenging.”The agreement enables pharmacists to initiate, adjust and discontinue medications for selected patients, while also monitoring side effects, adherence and treatment effectiveness. Pharmacists conduct regular assessments, communicate with the psychiatrist and mental health team, and provide ongoing follow-up care.Today, the program serves close to 40 patients, with plans to eventually expand to as many as 100. Better still, the one-year pilot that started with only a handful of patients has since been extended for another year by Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health, while researchers at the University of Saskatchewan begin studying the model’s impact in the community.Optimizing collaborative care in the communityResler believes the collaborative model could ultimately help shape how mental healthcare is delivered in other rural communities as well. “The goal is to expand this in different rural areas for sure,” she says, noting the pharmacy has already had discussions about broadening the agreement to involve additional psychiatrists and services over time.For Resler, the true innovation is not just about scope expansion, but about accessibility and trust. “The most meaningful impact has simply been improved accessibility and relationship building,” she said. “Patients are able to get quicker access to care more easily through the pharmacy, and we’ve opened up appointments for new patients to seek mental health services from the psychiatrist.”The pharmacy now sees patients every three months or more frequently if needed—a major shift from previous wait times that sometimes stretched to six months between psychiatric appointments. The pilot itself is funded through the Ministry of Health, with pharmacist time, appointments, documentation and follow-up activities tracked as part of the program’s evaluation.Because pharmacists interact with patients regularly, Resler says the team is often able to identify subtle changes in mood, behaviour or medication adherence long before situations escalate.“Just because patients were stable when they came into the program doesn’t mean things haven’t changed,” she says. “Now we are able to make interventions right in the pharmacy or quickly communicate concerns to the mental health team.”The model also reflects a broader philosophy that has shaped Resler’s entire career: community pharmacy should be deeply integrated into the healthcare system, not functioning at its margins.After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Pharmacy and Nutrition in 2007, Resler quickly found herself stepping into leadership roles. She began managing a pharmacy within a year of graduating and became pharmacy manager at Pharmasave Weyburn in 2010.“I thought management would take me away from patients, but as opportunities came, I realized I could make a difference in that role,” she says.Mentorship played a critical role in shaping that perspective, too. Resler credits several mentors within the profession for pushing her outside her comfort zone and encouraging her to take risks she may not otherwise have considered.That willingness to evolve has helped transform Pharmasave Weyburn into a highly diversified healthcare hub offering everything from chronic disease management and travel health consultations to smoking cessation services, immunizations, strep testing and treatment for ear infections, as well as palliative care support and long-term care services.There are approximately 60 staff members across both pharmacy locations, including pharmacists, registered pharmacy technicians, assistants, nursing support staff and front-store employees, along a steady stream of pharmacy students. The 11,000-square-foot Weyburn location also houses a Starbucks and Canada Post outlet—part of Resler’s broader vision of creating a true community destination. “We really do try to service everything that we can for our community,” she says.To that end, the pharmacy completed a major renovation in 2023 to accommodate its growing clinical services. The redesign included dedicated long-term care space, multiple counselling rooms for private consultations and injection services, and expanded workflow areas to support increasingly complex patient care.The mental health initiative itself required significant preparation. Pharmacists completed chronic disease management training, psychiatric medication management education and one-on-one training alongside psychiatric nurses.“We wanted to carry that same care from the clinic into the pharmacy,” Resler says. “Many of these patients we had known for years already, so fortunately the relationship was already built.”Helping staff thrive tooRather than micromanaging staff, Resler encourages pharmacists and team members to pursue areas of practice they are passionate about, whether that be diabetes education, travel health, palliative care or mental health services.“If you have an interest in any aspect of healthcare and want to build that within the pharmacy, we are game,” she says. “We’re there to support you.”Resler believes that culture of trust and empowerment has been essential in helping the team navigate some of the profession’s biggest challenges, including staffing shortages and burnout. “Like most healthcare professionals, workloads increase, expectations grow and your team gets stretched thin,” she said. “But maintaining patient care while looking after your team can be challenging.”She says it’s important to lead from example. “I think the big thing is to show up for your team. Be on the floor consistently with them, do the same work, take feedback and grow from there.”That leadership style has not gone unnoticed either. In 2025, Resler received the Neighborly Excellence Award for Visionary Leader, while Pharmasave Weyburn earned multiple honours, including Neighborly Pharmacy Store of the Year and the Pharmacy Association of Saskatchewan Professional Services Award.While her accomplishments to date speak volumes, Resler insists the recognition belongs to the entire team. “Nothing is possible without them,” she says. “They grow with me, challenge me and help expand our scope of practice together. That’s something very special.”Rosalind Stefanac is a Toronto writer specializing in business, retail, pharmacy and broader healthcare topics.

Innovator: Building trust, expanding care

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