Pharmacist goes the extra mile
Mobile clinic offering vaccinations now, flu shots in fall
PORT HAWKESBURY — If anyone has literally gone the extra mile during this pandemic, it’s been pharmacist Michael Hatt.
When he’s not working at the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy on Reeves Street in Port Hawkesbury, Hatt can be found in the ambulance he refurbished as a mobile clinic in the store’s parking lot.
Last fall, he took it on the road to administer flu shots in rural areas of Cape Breton that don’t have the usual access to pharmacies. These days he’s administering COVID-19 vaccinations in the ambulance, well away from the usual pharmacy business.
“We’ve been using it as an extra office space so we can basically double our capacity for doing the COVID vaccine — we’ve been using it as an extra office so we can do double the amount basically,” Hatt said in a phone interview Monday from his Port Hawkesbury home, where he was taking a break, nursing a sore foot. “It’s keeping everyone coming for the COVID vaccine separate from the pharmacy. In a sense, we’ve been able to isolate so that we can do pharmacy business on one side and COVID vaccines on the other. That way, if we ever did encounter someone positive and had to do tracing, the whole pharmacy isn’t affected.”
The whole idea of a mobile clinic arose out of classwork. Hatt is currently studying for his doctorate in pharmacy out of Newfoundland’s Memorial University.
“We had to come up with 10 ideas of new things to implement with our business and when I came up with the list of 10, most of them were related to trying to target outlying communities of Port Hawkesbury like Louisdale and Judique, places that don’t have pharmacy services. So when I looked at my list of 10, five involved some form of mobile service so that’s where I came up with the idea of going mobile.
“It’s been very well received.”
In fact, when Hatt first purchased a retired ambulance last fall online, his first plans were to take it to rural areas so residents wouldn’t have to go far to get their flu shots. He did just that last November.
“We typically would do a lot of flu shots for individuals outside of Port Hawkesbury in different communities but with the COVID-19 restrictions, we were going to be very limited in what we could offer so as luck had it, I found an ambulance online and made a deal with the seller and was able to purchase it and we were able to convert it into a clinic and we gave a great deal of flu shots with it.”
Hatt was recognized earlier this week with a Dr. Robert Strang Community Hero Award for his efforts in making vaccinations more available to everyone, including seniors and those with mobility issues. He says he’s humbled by the recognition.
“This has been beneficial for everyone.”