Layered Pharmacy Leadership
Blogs
- 9/26/2023
Are you a jaded pharmacist?
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. - 9/19/2023
Negotiating 101 for pharmacists
Important negotiations are about relationships, something pharmacists know a ton about. Each day we make friends with strangers needing health advice and tools to pair them with. - 9/12/2023
A pharmacist’s journal: writing to find answers in pharmacy
In writing about the anecdotes and lessons offered by managing people, the business and the profession, I found seven recurrent themes, which I called the seven dimensions of the ideal pharmacy leader. - 9/5/2023
The new pharmacy sweet spot
In an era when pharmacy scope of practice is changing rapidly and we venture out into new practice models, we may feel insecure at first. Perhaps the first few times we administer subcutaneous injections or prescribe antibiotics without a physician we will feel out of place. In these moments we must develop new beliefs, new confidence and a willingness to have flexible convictions as we practise deeper. - 8/29/2023
Pharmacists have teleprompters for brains (revisited)
All pharmacists have at least one thing in common: we passed a few multiple-choice exams. Remember when your classmate said he would know the answer when he saw it listed in the options? He was right. And this was the first clue that pharmacists have teleprompter brains. - 8/22/2023
What if you hire the wrong people in your pharmacy?
Once we invest (or waste) time doing (or not doing) something, we do not get it back. Staffing your pharmacy is much the same, since time spent recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, training and support a new employee will never be given back. Thus, bringing on the wrong person comes with significant costs. - 8/15/2023
The unfortunate truth: every pharmacy staff member is replaceable
This sounds harsh, but it often goes unrecognized so here it is straight: no matter what your pharmacy role is, you are replaceable. While you may not imagine that someone else is capable of taking over your job, there is. If you think your exit from your pharmacy will result in its closing, you are wrong. - 8/7/2023
Accepting bad news in your pharmacy
Bad news is confrontational. We hesitate to disrupt homeostasis because we are afraid of the negative emotions it will cause others and ourselves. The imagined response in anticipation of our inflammatory reaction makes others procrastinate. What if there were a way to force bad news from coming out before it is too late? - 8/1/2023
Is your pharmacy staff high maintenance?
Do you have a friend with repeated car problems or perhaps own a car like this yourself? That car ends up costing you time and money repeatedly and the frustration has you thinking about a new vehicle. That car is high maintenance. In thinking about your pharmacy team, do you have high maintenance staff members? - 7/25/2023
The second opinion: the art of changing your pharmacy-boss mind
It is the boss’s job to filter the conversations of the workplace and make informed decisions. The hardest part of being the pharmacy decision-maker comes in the times we are wrong. When that happens, do you have the guts to change your mind? - 7/18/2023
What Goldilocks teaches us about difficult pharmacy work
You know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Remember the porridge that was just the right temperature and the bed that was just the right softness? The same goes for the work you give your pharmacy staff: they need to be challenged, without drowning or coasting. - 7/4/2023
Thick skin: how not to take patient feedback personally
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.