This pharmacy prof is rewriting the rules of chronic pain care in Saskatchewan

Chronic pain is one of the most devastating and misunderstood conditions in Canada— especially in provinces where access to specialists is scarce. But an innovative care model run from the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Pharmacy & Nutrition is changing that reality, and its healthcare team is seeing the impact first-hand.“We’ve had patients tell us they were planning to seek medical assistance in dying because they just couldn’t take the pain anymore—and now they’re not,” says pharmacy professor Derek Jorgenson, director of the Usask Chronic Pain Clinic (UCPC), he first initiated as part of a research pilot. “It’s incredible that we can have that impact on another human.”In fact, the clinic—which employs pharmacists, physiotherapists, social works and mostly virtual physicians—is now one of the primary chronic pain care resources in Saskatchewan outside of Regina. Each month, the team receives about 75 new referrals, completes 300 patient appointments, and sees patients attend roughly 185 group education sessions while they wait for their first appointment.Currently, there's a 16-month wait list. Read: Understanding pain and what healthcare professionals can doJorgenson is quick to point out that he never set out to build a chronic pain clinic. “I’ve always worked in primary care and family medicine,” he says, pointing to the pharmacist-led Medication Assessment Centre at the University he has championed for more than a decade, which provides complex medication reviews for primary care patients. Community pharmacies send their most challenging cases, which in turn become teaching cases for pharmacy students.Gradually, the team was seeing more and more of those cases involving chronic pain. “We were getting a lot of referrals for people with chronic pain who were on 1,000 milligrams of morphine a day,” he recalls. When clinics did open, the province simply couldn’t recruit and retain the specialists needed to sustain the traditional model.For Jorgenson, this dilemma sparked a question: Could a different mix of clinicians—with physicians in a supportive, mostly virtual role—deliver sustainable, province-wide access to interdisciplinary chronic pain care?Read: Be alert for gabapentinoid-loop diuretic prescribing cascadesA different way to build a pain teamWith federal funding from the Substance Use and Addictions Program, Jorgenson launched a two-year pilot to test the idea. Today’s UCPC reflects that evidence-based experiment: a clinic operating out of the pharmacy school using the familiar “3M” chronic pain framework: medications, mind and movement. But without an on-site physician at its centre.Patients are seen in group appointments with a pharmacist, physiotherapist and social worker together and each discipline picks up follow-up work as needed. Physicians join twice-weekly case discussions and lead structured case conferences with referring clinicians, especially while patients wait for their first appointment.“The team is very sensitive to any idea of hierarchy,” Jorgenson says. “We describe ourselves as a pharmacy-school–operated interdisciplinary chronic pain clinic. Care plans are built as a team.”The physicians do not routinely see patients in person or prescribe on behalf of the clinic. Instead, prescribing changes are coordinated with the referring family doctor or nurse practitioner, who remains responsible for ongoing care. “One of our goals is to increase the capacity of the primary care system to handle more of this on its own,” he says.Numbers speak volumesResults from the clinic’s evaluation are striking for a relatively small, low-cost service. In terms of opioid therapy improvements, 23% of clinic patients transitioned to safer alternatives such as buprenorphine or naloxone, while the remainder saw an average 20% opioid dose reduction.Other patient-reported outcomes include: 68% saw significant improvements in overall health47% improved in activities of daily living44% reported better mood38% reported reduced pain severity29% reported fewer side effectsFurther, 85%of referring physicians said the clinic helped them improve the care of both referred patients and other patients with chronic pain in their practice. Data also showed that patients were 1.7 times more likely not to be hospitalized in the six months after UCPC care compared to the six months prior.“Our suspicion was always that if you support people with chronic pain properly, they won’t be in the emergency department as often,” says Jorgenson. “The administrative data seem to support that.”With the data in hand, Jorgenson approached the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health who is now providing ongoing operational funding for the clinic for the foreseeable future. “There was such a gap in care,” he says. “I think people were genuinely thankful we were trying to solve it.” Usask continues to clinic space as in-kind contribution which is key to the program’s sustainability.Recruiting physiotherapists, social workers and pharmacists has proved to be more reliable than depending on a small number of physician specialists. Plus, if physicians leave, the clinic can continue to operate until new ones are secured.Because UCPC is embedded in the College of Pharmacy & Nutrition, students are a key part the program too, with fourth-year pharmacy students rotating through the clinic alongside physiotherapy, medical and social work students.“It’s a proper clinic—reception, consultation rooms, everything,” says Jorgenson. “Students get hands-on interprofessional experience they couldn’t get anywhere else.”Meanwhile, the Medication Assessment Centre continues to operate alongside UCPC, offering complex medication reviews and pharmacist-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia. In 2026 it will also launch a pharmacist-led menopause medication consultation service, addressing another major care gap in the province.Although UCPC provides access province-wide through virtual care, Jorgenson says more is needed to truly reach all patients living with chronic pain in Saskatchewan. “We’re officially a provincial service, but we have just one physical location,” he says. “Ultimately, we’d like to expand, and a couple of satellite clinics in other regions would go a long way.”UCPC is also generating interest outside of the province. Teams from Prince Edward Island and Belgium have recently reached out after hearing Jorgenson present at the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy conference in France.

This pharmacy prof is rewriting the rules of chronic pain care in Saskatchewan

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