Pharmacists, interruptions can kill your train of thought

There is a dramatic cost to restarting.

In my previous article The Fear All Leaders Face I discuss the power of a mental health challenge called FOMO and how to reframe thought process to overcome it.

But what about when your train of thought is constantly derailed? There is a price to pay for restarting in your head. Let’s discuss a critical problem faced by pharmacy leaders: the interruption.

Clinical research estimates each break of thought brings on about a 20-minute loss in productivity, by the time we are able to mentally return to the concentration level we had before being interrupted. Imagine what this means for pharmacy workers, who are constantly stopped by patients, store shoppers, phones, fax machine (yep, we still use fax!), emails, software notifications or staff questions. No wonder there is no time for lunch or bathroom; we are essentially in a tunnel of interruption exposure. To make matters worse, because a large part of what we do is a mental focus where others mostly only see our upper bodies, we do not physically look busy, inviting anyone to approach, sometimes starting to talk to us from 20-feet away. The other day I was calculating a pediatric dose in my head. I looked over at the counter and a patient already had a foot out of their shoe and on my counter. How did they even get there, let alone strike that impressively flexible pose? Needless to say, it took me over 20-minutes to confirm I had the right dose (what should be a 2-minute check). 

The ultimate question is: what can pharmacy do about reducing the number of mental restarts we perform? After all, would you walk into your surgeon’s ER asking where the Q-tips where while they were obviously busy?

First, raise awareness inside and out. Talk about interruptions internally and make it part of your culture to respect them. Practice question-asking by physically going up to the person who is in obvious thought and waiting. Let them acknowledge you when they are ready. The thought gets finished, creating a mental checkpoint, eliminating the need for a restart. 

Talk about finishing tasks completely instead of leaving them for someone else to start from scratch wherever possible. This eliminates the need for two people to invest in mental start-up time when one person has already put in the work. For some dispensaries, the 12-hour shift may make that pharmacist more start-up efficient since they have time to get responses back from prescribers or deal with patient call backs, instead of having to relay updates to the next pharmacist coming in for the second 6 or 8-hour shift.

Second, use non-verbal cueswith shoppers, patients and phones to train a culture of reducing interruptions in the external environment. The island dispensary maintains the availability principal yet distances the pharmacist from the patient. Same service level, less interruption probability.

Use labour investments to cultivate safety. Having a front shop staff member on shift during the busier foot traffic times to triage and direct will no doubt take care of a large majority of things that are not required of the pharmacist. “Hey, where’s the washroom?” 

Let the phone ring a little. Finishing your thought while the phone rings 3–4 times is acceptable in my view. What matters is the conversation that occurs when the phone is picked up more than simply answering on the first ring. It also sends a subtle message: “we are busy, please respect that while we care for you and others.”

Resist raising your head right away. The patient who pops into the drop off or pick-up counter is critically important. But so is the patient you are working on (and that patient was there first). You if were administering a vaccine, you would not stop to get the counter. Make eye contact the moment you are ready to give them your full, undivided, deserved attention. Silently mouth your thought process if you sense eyes on you. This doubles down your focus while politely signally to the patient: “please wait”. 

The pharmacy world is busy and interruption-prone. Think about internal and external interruptions. Identify your top 3 interruptions and strategize how to mitigate each of them by half. Imagine all the 20-minute thought completions you could add back to your patients, staff and business. And when you get home to your family, imagine the energy you can give them.

Put all your devices on airplane. You don’t need to know what is going on with others when they feel the need to tell you. So, hide your devices and put your wearables on airplane. You will find out the daily news when you are ready for it. 

Interruptions kill. Take charge of your environment instead of it taking charge of you. The doctor will see you now.  If you liked this article, keep the fire burning.