Educating pharmacy students through a pandemic: Reflecting on our COVID-19 experience.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pharmacy education worldwide has been immense, affecting students, educators and regulatory agencies. Pharmacy programmes have had to rapidly adapt in their delivery of education, maintaining standards while also ensuring the safety of all stakeholders. In this commentary, we describe the challenges, compromises and solutions adopted by our institution throughout the pandemic, the lessons learnt, adaptive measures taken, and strategies to develop and future-proof our curricula.

Differences in 7th and 8th edition American Joint Committee on Cancer staging for periocular sebaceous carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the clinicopathological features of periocular sebaceous carcinoma and describe the differences in T category between the seventh and eighth editions of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system for eyelid carcinoma in a Canadian population. METHODS: This study is a single-centre retrospective review of consecutive patients diagnosed with periocular sebaceous carcinoma at Vancouver General Hospital over a 24-year period. Medical records and pathological slides were reviewed. Clinicopathological features, management, and outcomes were recorded. Each carcinoma was staged as per both the seventh and eighth editions AJCC staging system for eyelid carcinoma. RESULTS: Forty-five patients (25 women, 20 men) were identified with a median age of 74 years (range 42-91 years). Tumour size was with a median of 4 mm (range 1-30 mm) and a mean of 6.7 mm. Using the seventh edition, patients were assigned the following T categories: Tis = 10, T1 = 9, T2 = 11, T3 = 8, T4 = 0. Under the eighth edition, 18 of 45 patients (40%) were restaged, with the majority of these (15 patients, 33%) being downstaged. The eighth edition categories were as follows: Tis = 10, T1 = 22, T2 = 3, T3 = 0, T4 = 3. Three patients developed disease recurrence, 2 of whom (staged T2c and T4b) died of disease. CONCLUSIONS: There were substantial differences in the seventh and eighth editions of AJCC for the staging of periocular sebaceous carcinoma. Our series had small tumours at presentation with infrequent recurrences or metastases. We found a high number of patients with in-situ-only disease.