- 7/9/2024
Over the past two years, I have journaled about the anecdotes and lessons from over a decade of managing small and larger pharmacy teams, across corporate and independent models, both from retail and long-term-care. Across the multitude of journal entries, 7 key characteristics (which I call dimensions) show up recurrently. Enunciating them with very specific adjectives and placing them in an acronym allowed me to understand what to strive for in showing up for my patients, team and business.
- 7/2/2024
Raphael, is a great clinician and an extremely hard worker, capable of grinding through the heavy lifting the profession requires. But the demands of pharmacy life with higher expectations, rude customers, diminishing support staff and head office policies forced down his throat have all taken their toll.
- 6/17/2024
I have written about how triathlon is a lifelong journey than offers more than fitness. It forces me to dig deep and push boundaries of resiliency while balancing rest, sleep, nutrition, stress management, stretching and yoga. Triathlon has given me the other part of my identity that hibernates during the workweek. Opening the box and finding triathlon proved an amplification of who I am.
- 6/17/2024
In a pharmacy, you have rep staff, like the experienced ones who largely run your programs and who are recognized by patients and prescribers. You also have house league staff in those who work fewer hours per week or month.
- 6/10/2024
Navigating in pharmacy takes a mindset of being comfortable not always knowing what is just around the corner. In a world where we are used to setting goals and planning long term, we are forced into a new normal that has our answers unveiling themselves with less notice.
- 6/3/2024
There are countless decisions in pharmacy that we need to make even though they may be less than ideal or feel less than comfortable. As the profession continues to adapt to the complexity of healthcare, pharmacy will continue to change and that will mean having to make unpopular yet necessary decisions.
- 5/28/2024
A patient acted surprised when I refused to fill a virtual care order for high dose pregabalin after getting an electronic message that he already filled it somewhere else that day. Given that he received seven different pregabalin prescriptions in the past six months from seven different virtual care clinics located in various cities across Canada, my radar was on high alert.
- 5/21/2024
Hockey has been a big part of my life since the ages of VHS tapes and dial-up internet. While I no longer play competitively (or rewind my movies), I take pride in coaching my kids’ teams. It is here that I have come to realize a similar role hockey coaches and pharmacy managers play in enabling the difficult conversations.
- 5/14/2024
To be able to show up purposefully during the work, we need to get purposeful rest. In a profession with countless shortages of personnel and growing responsibility it is extremely difficult to get the rest. The trouble is, if we do not, we will never adapt and be stuck rushing our workouts with little gains.
- 5/7/2024
The entry point of an employee into an organization is an important time. Putting in work and patience in the time leading up to this is something a pharmacy leader needs to be meticulous and calculated about. Rush this process and mistakes can surface that are nearly impossible to fix.
- 4/30/2024
Clearing the slate means that I come to work each day with the discipline of delegating as many items from my to-do list to others as I can. I explain ahead of time that I am passionate about what we do and I think about it a lot. The thinking generates many action items that I alone could never accomplish.
- 4/22/2024
Whether pharmacists like it or not, we are the celebrities of the pharmacy. We have important staff around us that keep us afloat but to many of our patients, especially our most regular ones, we are their main event.
