Pharmacy U news

The local pharmacy is a wonderful illustration of a place where leadership is required. Each member of the staff as well as each patient has unique needs. The leader recognizes the best way to serve each person is by tailoring the approach for each person and situation. This is definitely not a science, but an art form that develops over time as it is nurtured.

I don’t know what your relationship is like with these three friends, but I invite and encourage you to be the best friend to today, just as he is to you. Do not count on tomorrow, for he is always accompanied by tons of anxiety. Learn from yesterday, but do not spend so much time that you are filled with regret over what you woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Clearing the slate means that I come to work each day with the discipline of delegating as many items from my to-do list to others as I can. I explain ahead of time that I am passionate about what we do and I think about it a lot. The thinking generates many action items that I alone could never accomplish.

Have you ever been knocked down? We all have. We have all been knocked down literally or figuratively before. And chances are, we will all be knocked down again. But is that such a bad thing?

Whether pharmacists like it or not, we are the celebrities of the pharmacy. We have important staff around us that keep us afloat but to many of our patients, especially our most regular ones, we are their main event.

If you are still doing things the same way you were 10 or 15 years ago, chances are your dispensary is behind the times. And you might very well be making your life – and your pharmacy’s operations – more difficult than they need to be.

In the pharmacy, there are many decisions to make. Some are easy to make, others are much more difficult. The decisions are not only about patient care; they also include decisions about staffing, inventory management and contracting, and list goes on (and on).

Great pharmacy leaders find themselves organically in charge of the operation yet out of the control of the minutia. How? They create an environment where people contribute to the development of their plans. They mobilize the right answers by giving autonomy.