- 12/16/2024
It is much easier to fantasize about the various ways your pharmacy can be successful. We can picture a rising prescription volume, inventing new workflow to get medication reviews done efficiently, conducting a vaccine clinic or implementing robotics for blister packaging. However, the much harder mental exercise is imagining how your pharmacy can fail. It means predicting the unpredictable, without letting it control you.
- 12/9/2024
As part of the duties of being a pharmacist, our job involves helping people when they are not at their best. Empathetically recognizing that they carry burdens with their visits to see us is the first step to being the helper (as bystander) instead of a combatant fighting against them. They do not necessarily mean to fight us, but we are just sometimes in their way. It is our job to recognize that and manage it.
- 12/2/2024
We are unique. Pharmacists are their own kind, and we lack a band of unity where we can vent, share ideas and correct each other when going off-path. The result is a feeling of being somewhat isolated. Since we cannot exactly place our identities within the groups of people around us, we can feel different and often lack a suitable like-minded partner to support us as we navigate and process the day.
- 11/25/2024
While we may not always be on our game as pharmacy leaders, we need to understand that we are mentors whether we like it or not. Our actions, words and behaviours automatically serve as examples of what we expect from others.
- 11/18/2024
Over the past two decades as a pharmacy worker, I have held many jobs, from a 16-year-old cashier who cleaned the toilets to becoming a pharmacy owner, and I have experienced the growing responsibilities in our profession from all vantage points.
- 11/11/2024
I strongly believe that when we make the decision to hire someone, that person becomes part of the family and needs our support and resources until exiting. The first priority of a leader is to take care of staff, then staff can take care of customers and customers can take care of business.
- 11/5/2024
A new boss is an opportunity. People on are good behaviour and their minds are sharp. They are energized and observant. They try to make good impressions and become free to give opinions they would not have before. The new boss organically lights up the reset button, now available for the staff to press.
- 10/28/2024
Ever find yourself working harder than you need to in the process of buying something for your pharmacy? When choosing a vendor, I have learned that I prefer to do business with those I can communicate with, which is a nice way of saying that I do not have to babysit them.
- 10/22/2024
The good old pharmacy model saw the pharmacist as the firefighter and the architect, with burnout waiting around the corner. This one-person band put out fires and built buildings. However, since pharmacy is much more complex today, we find that the traditional jack-of-all-trades pharmacist divided into two different people.
- 10/15/2024
Across years of experience practising pharmacy, a pharmacist may go through a natural incline in ego during a steep initial learning phase, followed by a plateau. Here pharmacists have seen many of the more intense challenges already and the number of new headaches flattens out. Finally, towards approximately the last third of the pharmacists’ career, they begin feeling less driven by ego and let the problems around them simmer or settle.
- 10/8/2024
The problem with pharmacy is that it is all practice. It is training without race day. The daily grind offers much of the same training as it did the day before. After a short time, we become jaded. We practise with repetitive questions, monotonous problems, completing the daily-weekly-monthly tasks and draft endless calendars.
- 10/8/2024
Pharmacy can learn from a world-class Finnish education system by bringing more prestige, calibre and preparedness to our managers. We can also creatively find ways to make the job more fun and autonomous. We can also shift to treating our lowest skilled staff to their potential instead of their current status quo.
