Layered Pharmacy Leadership
Blogs
- 10/17/2023
3 ways your pharmacy can fail
Pharmacy is a little like jumping out of an airplane. It takes bravery, practice, training and most of all, a parachute. While the primary parachute is obvious, there is another essential need before jumping out of the plane: the back-up chute. - 10/16/2023
Pushing your pharmacy stress threshold is good for you!
Gone are the days of a "druggist" using leeches or being the only druggist in town. Gone are the product-driven experts solely paid for dispensing. Pharmacists have stretched the limits of their horizons before us and now it is our turn. It’s time to prescribe! - 10/10/2023
Why pharmacists should avoid cutting their own lawn
Some bets in life are simple once you wrap your mind around them. For years, my wife and I resisted paying someone to cut our lawn. Despite the insane schedule that comes with being connected to a few pharmacies, triathlon training and everything that two children brought our way, I was fixated on the cost of paying someone. - 9/28/2023
Hiring pharmacy staff without actual experience
Like many pharmacy manager-owners, I have conducted a few interviews in my time. Some were highly collaborative and resulted in all-stars still working strongly with us today. Other résumés turned into napkins or scrap paper. - 9/26/2023
Are you a jaded pharmacist?
The problem with pharmacy is that it is all practice. It is training without race day. The daily grind offers much of the same training as it did the day before. After a short time, we become jaded. - 9/19/2023
Negotiating 101 for pharmacists
Important negotiations are about relationships, something pharmacists know a ton about. Each day we make friends with strangers needing health advice and tools to pair them with. - 9/12/2023
A pharmacist’s journal: writing to find answers in pharmacy
In writing about the anecdotes and lessons offered by managing people, the business and the profession, I found seven recurrent themes, which I called the seven dimensions of the ideal pharmacy leader. - 9/5/2023
The new pharmacy sweet spot
In an era when pharmacy scope of practice is changing rapidly and we venture out into new practice models, we may feel insecure at first. Perhaps the first few times we administer subcutaneous injections or prescribe antibiotics without a physician we will feel out of place. In these moments we must develop new beliefs, new confidence and a willingness to have flexible convictions as we practise deeper. - 8/29/2023
Pharmacists have teleprompters for brains (revisited)
All pharmacists have at least one thing in common: we passed a few multiple-choice exams. Remember when your classmate said he would know the answer when he saw it listed in the options? He was right. And this was the first clue that pharmacists have teleprompter brains. - 8/22/2023
What if you hire the wrong people in your pharmacy?
Once we invest (or waste) time doing (or not doing) something, we do not get it back. Staffing your pharmacy is much the same, since time spent recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, training and support a new employee will never be given back. Thus, bringing on the wrong person comes with significant costs. - 8/15/2023
The unfortunate truth: every pharmacy staff member is replaceable
This sounds harsh, but it often goes unrecognized so here it is straight: no matter what your pharmacy role is, you are replaceable. While you may not imagine that someone else is capable of taking over your job, there is. If you think your exit from your pharmacy will result in its closing, you are wrong. - 8/8/2023
Accepting bad news in your pharmacy
Bad news is confrontational. We hesitate to disrupt homeostasis because we are afraid of the negative emotions it will cause others and ourselves. The imagined response in anticipation of our inflammatory reaction makes others procrastinate. What if there were a way to force bad news from coming out before it is too late?