Pharmacy U news

The greatest threat to pharmacy practice today is in pharmacists maintaining their relevancy to both patients and payers. While we are becoming less necessary for technical work and checking prescriptions, our other role as “counselling” on medications can also easily become obsolete.

On the surface, for many pharmacists meeting a customer’s needs might mean filling an Rx accurately with the appropriate counselling, but the more important benefit is not necessarily the patient’s stated purpose.

In any given hour the always accessible, no-appointment needed, world’s number one trusted health care provider has phones ringing, patients in the aisles looking for recommendations, patients waiting in the counselling room for vaccines, deliveries arriving.

Do you have a Leadership Lens? Do you look at things with a leader’s perspective? Do you look at situations and assess the ways you can help someone get from where they are to another place? If you do not, do not be discouraged. You are not alone.

Yes, without genuine washroom breaks it’s true that pharmacists can hold water like camels, but there is a more important similarity: they can both carry significant loads on their backs.

The mouth is literally a viral factory, and it is the gateway to the rest of the body. Indeed, gum disease, otherwise known as periodontitis, has now been shown to be a better predictor of COVID-19 severity than a patient's age. This is HUGE.

Running a successful pharmacy is not all fill and bill. There are many more factors that determine the health not only of your patients but of your overall business.

In 2005, I received a phone call with an idea. The idea was to get pharmacists trained to provide immunization services. At the time this was an outrageous idea to me. But I did not reject it. About a dozen pharmacists trained with me that first year. Fast forward six years and I found myself serving on a team that had trained over 12,000 pharmacists!