ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR
- 3/11/2024
Pharmacy leadership—old school versus new school
Today, the best bosses are leaders. They take care of others before themselves and serve those who execute their vision, which was developed from collective opinion. Leaders give others a chance to ask why and explain the reasons for major decisions. - 3/4/2024
A (good) four-letter word for pharmacy
Of all the things the boss can provide to a staff there is one critical element that is easy to miss. Aside from the usual – money, time off, benefits, bonuses, training, tools and support – the boss provides something that takes staff through the hard moments and keeps them invested in the job for the long haul. - 2/26/2024
5 questions to help validate a pharmacist’s negative thoughts
What if you could control the way you felt by controlling the way you thought? Like a remote control for television, our negative thoughts take us to the shows playing in our heads. The good news: we can train our brains to better handle negative thoughts, so we end up watching the shows we want instead of being stuck in a bad movie, too deeply committed to walk away. - 2/19/2024
5 must-hit sleep tactics for zombie pharmacists
Pharmacists are bad at taking their own advice. We counsel on sleep. We counsel on sleep hygiene. Then we go home and flush it. We doom-scroll our phones, grab a snack because we skipped food while busy at work, and sometimes even pour a drink. Then we sleep poorly and expect ourselves to run an optimal dispensary the next day. - 2/12/2024
Is your pharmacy a lion or hummingbird?
Have you ever stopped to consider how much you actually make per hour as a pharmacy owner? And have you considered how much you make based on the type of operation you run? You might be surprised to run the numbers. - 2/5/2024
Where are you on your pharmacy job ladder?
Reflecting on 15 years of being a pharmacist, which started as a part-time pharmacy cashier making $6.85 per hour five years before that, I have held all these traditional job titles that we find in community pharmacy. This means that through two decades, I have spent most of my time looking up the ladder and now my vantage point has me looking down the ladder for a full-circle picture of the profession and its jobs. - 1/29/2024
5 strategies to deal with pharmacy sick calls elegantly
People get sick, it happens. But when we see obvious patterns like repeated incidents of staff calling in sick before a weekend or the same employee being sick on a weekly basis, there is some work do to. - 1/22/2024
5 strategies to help pharmacists negotiate more effectively
We are not lawyers. We are not real estate agents. However, that does not mean we are devoid of negotiating skills. Whether we are explaining a co-pay to a patient, signing an agreement with an employer, buying a pharmacy or making a staff schedule, there are parts of the pharmacist’s day where we just have to pull up our pants and negotiate. - 1/8/2024
Why you should divide your pharmacy into its compartments
Compartmentalization permits risk management. Viewing your pharmacy down into its pieces can bring tremendous advantage. Structuring workflow or systems such that if disaster happens, only pieces are lost instead of the whole may sound tedious, but after one disaster the value will be evident. - 1/8/2024
Top tips for pharmacists who need to be babysitters
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.