Pharmacy U news

Spring has arrived and summer, with vacations and changes in business patterns, is not far behind. It is time to start thinking about seasonal staffing – whether for front shop positions or pharmacy tech jobs.

Many years ago, I was a floating pharmacist and I had responsibilities to schedule and provide coverage for more than a dozen stores. This was my first leadership role as a pharmacist outside of leading my store teams and patients. I now had the opportunity to lead dozens of pharmacists and work out schedules to keep families happy and stores open.

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.

Have you ever become angry or frustrated because someone didn’t do what you told them to do? Or have you ever not done something in the way you were instructed to do? We all have at one time or another!

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.

A transition quarterback is primarily an intermediary and an overseer—sort of a “white hat” for the sale project—who ensures that everyone on the team is working together, getting along, and moving in the same direction: towards a satisfactory sale of your business. Without an effective leader, the transition team experience can go wrong in a whole bunch of ways.

A bane of my existence in an earlier part of my pharmacy career came around prescription transfer coupons. The company I worked for at the time would put coupons in the weekly circular to invite and entice new patients to transfer some (or all) of their prescriptions to our pharmacy. These promotions would have good results to bring new patients to our pharmacy, but we would struggle to keep them. Why do you suppose that was?

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.