Mark Barnes on respect, compassion and the future of healthcare

Posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2023

When it comes to serious issues like mental health and substance abuse, Mark Barnes believes a little respect can go a long way.

The owner of the Ottawa-based Respect RX pharmacy, Barnes has made a career out of challenging the biases surrounding drug misuse and mental health issues. With compassion, understanding and care, he has spent years working in overdose prevention and harm reduction amid Canada’s ongoing opioid crisis.

Barnes and his partners opened the first Respect RX pharmacy in 2013, located in Vanier. The success of its respect-based and patient-focused care has improved the lives of many vulnerable community members and led to the opening of three additional locations in Ottawa and one in Cornwall. Barnes has since become a leading voice in harm-reduction care: he sits on the City of Ottawa’s Overdose Prevention and Response Task Force, champions the opioid-reversing drug Naloxone and has given numerous talks and presentations on substance abuse and its underlying causes.

In 2016, Barnes began outreach efforts with Algonquin College learners. Barnes has visited residences, classrooms and events to discuss safe drug usage and the raw dangers of unsafe consumption, acknowledging the shortcomings of a drug abstinence approach.

“[We had] a meet-you-where-you-are mentally approach, meaning not telling students what to do but telling them how to do it safely,” said Barnes. “We started doing booth-type presentations and community outreach at residences and classrooms … as well as AC Day One, both in January and September, and at other campuses like Pembroke and Perth.”

His AC outreach would later expand into the Algonquin College Respect RX Pharmacy Perseverance Bursary, which recognizes and celebrates the strength of learners who maintain satisfactory standing in their studies while also contending with trauma, addiction or mental health distress.

“[The bursary] has to be reflective of a student who has been through wars — whether it’s family or themselves personally with a complex mental health or substance misuse issue — [in order to be] be a successful candidate,” said Barnes. “Successful, to me, is defined as, hey, you’re going to school. Every day you’re getting through it. It’s not about the best marks — I didn’t have the best marks — but that you’re getting through it.”

Barnes hopes that graduates entering the healthcare field will embrace empathy and compassion in their work, noting that these attitudes are necessary following the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes that capable, optimistic and educated graduates have all the necessary tools to improve the healthcare field and improve the lives of those in their care.

“It’s very easy in healthcare, especially, to feel overwhelmed and overworked in our underfunded, overworked healthcare system,” said Barnes. “As you prepare to enter into your career, do not surround yourself with naysayers. Do not surround yourself with people who bring you down. You’re highly educated. You’re motivated. And you’ve come from a great school that has prepared you to change healthcare for the better.”

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