Layered Pharmacy Leadership

Blogs

• 6/20/2023

  3 reasons pharmacists are lonely

  There seems no reprieve to the pharmacist’s daily battles, let alone carrying the weight of nurturing a high-volume prescription count, staff that need plenty of attention and keeping an eye on a business that depends on a ton of moving parts.
• 6/20/2023

  Letting the phone ring can be good customer service in pharmacy

  While a pharmacist is counselling a patient in-person, would it be appropriate for them to stop to answer the phone? Would we expect this of a surgeon or a plumber? Then why do we have to stop what we are doing mid-thought to answer the phone in the first two or three rings for the sake of good customer service?
• 6/13/2023

  Pharmacists, firefighters and architects: which one are you?

  Some urgent moments of pharmacy involve getting prescriptions filled, managing wait times and dealing with due dates like order cut-off times, answering phones and patient line-ups. While this urgent work needs to be done, it does not offer much by way of making the pharmacy operate more efficiently or being ready for the future.
• 6/6/2023

  Solving the pharmacy hiring drought, Part 2

  People are any workplace’s most valuable asset. They are what make it all tick. To run a great pharmacy, we need great people. To find great people, we need to interview like a champion. Knowing that executing a great interview is a skill and hiring the right person is essential, it is worth time analyzing what interview questions pull out the most value in the least amount of time and what red flags we cannot afford to miss.
• 5/30/2023

  Solving the pharmacy hiring drought, Part 1

  Gone are the days where your next hire would walk in, shake your hand and a conversation led to finding your next all-star. The fact that this may have even worked in the past is mind-blowing. To find more résumés, we need to plant seeds, but not just when we need to actively grow something. We need to constantly be recruiting instead of waiting for a workforce gap to happen.
• 5/23/2023

  What do you do when all your pharmacy staff quit?

  Workplace exit happens organically when new philosophies and overarching reassessments happen inside a team. When a leader begins examining history, gathering mental data, asking questions and offering change, people naturally follow suit by doing the same in their own role. Suddenly they see restart potential for themselves.
• 5/15/2023

  Do you want every patient as a patient in your pharmacy? Discharging the incompatible ones

  The patient-healthcare provider bond is an alliance of honesty, understanding and trust. In our best attempts to provide patient care, we sometimes fail to establish the required relationship based on the way a patient treats us or the staff. This can feel like an incompatibility or inability to connect in a collaborative way.
• 5/9/2023

  Are pharmacists too nice to get paid?

  The pharmacist personality is commonly a confrontation-avoider. We will often put ourselves out for the sake of others. People are used to getting our attention whenever they want it, no matter how small their query.
• 5/2/2023

  Can you selectively diversify your pharmacy day job?

  For the past five years my work portfolio has been a mix of corporate and independent pharmacy work. I have a day job at a corporate pharmacy as a practising pharmacist/pharmacy manager that I spend close to 40 hours per week at and own two pharmacies well outside of the trading area to avoid any conflict of interest.
• 4/25/2023

  Is your mental chatter about pharmacy your worst enemy?

  If anyone wrote down the negative thoughts that go through the minds of pharmacy people, it would alarm you (and a psychiatrist). Trust me.
• 4/18/2023

  How to deal with the mental aftermath of confrontation

  Leaders must be prepared to put their bulletproof vest on and own it. To process the time-waster’s feedback, remember that the issue is not a reflection on you, but a reflection on a set of circumstances that you were a part in building. Those circumstances are unpredictable and often are tasks that others do not have the guts to take on.
• 4/8/2023

  Update: Pharmacists and minor ailments. Howzit going?

  At the stroke of 2023, Ontario pharmacists were capable of initiating prescription medications without patients seeing a prescriber beforehand. It is a major solution to a major ailment plaguing a complex and congested healthcare system.