Pharmacy U news

Over the last couple articles, we have looked generally at the limitations we have as leaders. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is simply a fact of life. We all have limits. Today, we are going to look at how limits can be good.

Without municipal water you would have to carry an empty bucket to a well two miles away, take a scoop to fill your bucket and walk it back to your house. Quickly, you would be searching for ways to make the trip more efficient so you could spend less time transporting water and more time on other essential tasks. But what if your bucket had a ton of holes? Our pharmacy dispensaries have many holes, many we don’t realize.

If a patient can walk into any pharmacy and leave with the SAME product and SAME information, where’s the value? What is the value a patient perceives in choosing your pharmacy?

When last we met, we began to look at the concept of seasons and how it applies to our leadership. Today, we are going to look at things from a slightly different angle. We have established that we are all leaders. We all play a role in helping someone at some time do something or go somewhere. But what happens when there are a lot of leaders trying to help someone do something or go somewhere at the same time?

Clinical practice guidelines and regulatory colleges both recommend interprofessional collaboration. But, even knowing this collaboration can enhance patient care, many pharmacists struggle with enhancing relationships with physicians in their community.

There are feedback loops with positive and negative impacts happening all day long, whether you notice them or not. What if you could harness positive loops and blunt the negative ones?

While we all dream of this fairly-tale orchard-type succession plan, the current environment and low inventory of perfect people simply do not allow it. You know people-development should be your highest priority, you just don’t know where to start. The answer: build step ladders.

It strikes me that the double whammy of increasing inflation and increasing interest rates will result in more and more of our patients and customers being squeezed financially and unable to afford their medications and basic staples. In my practice, I always relied upon the principle that our patients were better off taking their medication as prescribed than not taking it at all.