- 1/23/2024
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.
- 1/9/2024
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.
- 1/9/2024
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.
- 1/2/2024
We know that emotional decisions rarely end being up the right ones. When this happens, great leaders have the ability to zoom out, resist the urge to be swept away by the details and focus on the overall broader situation.
- 12/26/2023
In a repetitive pharmacy world that craves constant peaks of new-ness, those with the ability to grind will out-succeed those that make impulse decisions and routinely make big pharmacy system changes. Resisting temptation in a world of abundance can be your ally.
- 12/19/2023
One job of the pharmacy leader is to moderate the range of personalities on the team. Once the right people are involved, everyone’s opinion is valid and part of the process of arriving at the best decisions, but only if everyone is given an opportunity to speak.
- 12/12/2023
Spend time building meaningful patient relationships instead of focusing on the empty calories of transactions. Transactions pay off once, while relationships pay off repeatedly. Even if each individual payoff is smaller than each individual transaction, the sum of all the relationships over their much longer lifespan will come out further ahead.
- 12/5/2023
In the pharmacy, there are countless ways of being a set-up person. For example, you can leave a proper note, count out the meds in anticipation of the door-crasher tomorrow morning, allow staff to make their own schedule within set parameters, give people freedom to make workflow decisions, do the dishes from the compounding sink, check your fair share of blister packs or organize the paperwork for tomorrow’s appointments.
- 11/28/2023
Pharmacy is like a snow storm. During a heavy storm, we cannot keep up with the falling snow even with constant shovelling. We end up going about our lives, then dealing with the damage when the storm is over. The act of shovelling is put on hold until after the storm is over.
- 11/21/2023
For the pharmacy world struggling with back orders, recalls and mixed-up orders, owing is a part of the job. But owings – or debt – for a pharmacist are analogous to the problem of lost luggage.
- 11/14/2023
With a very sparse number of pharmacy staff in the neighbourhood to choose from, we now often select workers without actual pharmacy experience. This means that leaders need to have an even keener eye for detecting the cross-over skills hidden in the stories of those we are interviewing.
- 11/7/2023
By their scientific method, scientists’ actions demonstrate that they do not know the true answer but have ideas as to what it could be. Scientists resist the urge to form irreversible public opinions. Instead, they let the process show them the way, then steer in that direction in full willingness to pivot as necessary.
