Pharmacy U news

When I realized that patients want and expect their medication experts to guide many of their choices, I began putting effort into developing workflow that would reduce the number of times patients visited or called for interactions that did not require the pharmacist.

Full disclosure: I am not now, nor was I ever, a pharmacist. But as they say: ‘some of my best friends are pharmacists’ and I sure got to know hundreds—thousands?—of pharmacists and their teams over my 27 years in pharmacy. I was proud and privileged to be entrusted with the leadership of an independent community retail pharmacy brand.

Being a striker, regardless of how good, gave me an identity and I quickly realized how important it is for people to have jobs. When pharmacists try to do everything themselves, they take someone else’s job. When we fail at delegating, we accidentally take purpose and importance away from others. Not only does this mitigate the impact the multi-tasking pharmacist can make, but also blunts what others have to offer on the team.

By developing our charisma as a learned skill, we can have a greater impact on the people we encounter. Given so many of the headwinds that pharmacists face, developing this skill can pay huge dividends. Here are a few ways we can develop our charisma.

Acute and chronic treatments go beyond health conditions. They also apply to many of the activities throughout life. People who bring an acute mentality to their physical fitness will likely not experience the same results as those who bring a chronic mindset to the same situation. How does this relate to pharmacy practice? A prime example is in the area of medication adherence.

The act of having someone in charge, responsible for the overall pharmacy operation, gives everyone structure, which is a foundational element of humans to build anything. Once this is established, the operators of any dispensary have someone to go to with problems, instead of living in the anxious environment of not knowing if or when their concerns will be resolved.

Any business that successfully creates and keeps a customer in a cost-effective way will make a profit. If for any reason, a business fails to attract new and sustain a certain number of customers, it will experience losses. And too many losses will eventually lead to business failure. It should go without saying that an important part of your pharmacy’s business strategy is to make money, but making money shouldn't be the sole purpose of your business.

I was working at the pharmacy in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania many years ago. We had a brand-new (remodelled) store, and we now had a drive-thru. As we adjusted to life with a drive-thru, I had one technician who struggled to use the comms system at the drive-thru and felt it was more appropriate (and convenient) to try to communicate with our patients and customers THROUGH the glass window. She would literally yell through the glass.