Pharmacy U news

Approximately 1 in 4 Canadians are affected by obesity. Obesity is an incredibly complex issue. This will come as no surprise to healthcare professionals who often see patients struggling not only to lose weight but also to maintain weight loss.

One of the most significant challenges that pharmacist entrepreneurs encounter is obtaining buy-in from their team members, particularly within the dynamic and regulated landscape of the healthcare industry.

Of all the things the boss can provide to a staff there is one critical element that is easy to miss. Aside from the usual – money, time off, benefits, bonuses, training, tools and support – the boss provides something that takes staff through the hard moments and keeps them invested in the job for the long haul.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Some expectation of time was set and not met. We overpromise and under-deliver. This leads to frustration for the people we serve. In the pharmacy, my default wait time I’d tell patients to fill a prescription was 10 minutes. When I was able to produce the prescription in six minutes, the patient was happy. If I took 12 minutes, the patient was unhappy.

What if you could control the way you felt by controlling the way you thought? Like a remote control for television, our negative thoughts take us to the shows playing in our heads. The good news: we can train our brains to better handle negative thoughts, so we end up watching the shows we want instead of being stuck in a bad movie, too deeply committed to walk away.

If your store is overstaffed, you may need to make difficult decisions like reducing staff or potentially laying off unproductive or redundant employees. Doing that can be painful, for your employees and for you. So how do you right-staff the right way?

You must continue to improve so that you can continue to advance your team on their mission. No one will follow a pharmacy leader promoting outdated philosophies and goals for long.

Pharmacists are bad at taking their own advice. We counsel on sleep. We counsel on sleep hygiene. Then we go home and flush it. We doom-scroll our phones, grab a snack because we skipped food while busy at work, and sometimes even pour a drink. Then we sleep poorly and expect ourselves to run an optimal dispensary the next day.