Snow storms and the growing theme of the pharmacist waitlist

“I think I have a bladder infection; can I book an appointment?”

“Sure, he’ll see you in five months.”

As we are handed the privilege of more clinical responsibility, pharmacists need to grow in our ability to manage our queue. The answer for this will be engaging staff since we cannot do this ourselves.

Pharmacy is like a snow storm

During a heavy storm, we cannot keep up with the falling snow even with constant shovelling. We end up going about our lives, then dealing with the damage when the storm is over. The act of shovelling is put on hold until after the storm is over.  

In pharmacy, work storms onto us through various pathways, such as patient Rx drop-off, doctor verbal order, fax or eRx or via other disruptions such as phone calls, vaccine waitlists, Rx pick-up or over-the-counter questions. Since the work comes in faster than it can be completed, pharmacies operate in a state of digging themselves out of back logs of tasks.

All of this means the pharmacist has to have a superpower of managing their mental queue, like a waitlist for our brain. In pharmacy school, we managed a heavy portfolio of courses, but could not have processed our notes for each lecture that day since preparing for the exam, lab or patient case work-up would have taken priority. Thus, we put studying the notes from the daily lectures on the back-burner to tackle the higher priority tasks.

As pharmacists, we must be comfortable allowing our waitlists to grow, knowing we will need to re-prioritize our time based on what our patients need on a day-to-day basis. Discussing this concept with our staff can reduce stress and normalize overwhelming feelings. That important conversation opens the door to brainstorming options that reduce waitlists and relieve our mental queues, such as workflow efficiencies like prescribing templates, blister pack batching, central fill, full utilization of the pharmacy technician, Rx refill mobile apps and online appointment booking, to name a few.

Staff need a canvas to understand what is bothering them and the pharmacist can provide that by explaining the snow storm concept and asking them how we can better manage our mental queue.

For much more in depth analysis on the snow-shovelling pharmacist and learn how to solve the problems not taught in pharmacy school, subscribe to the weekly newsletter at layeredleadership.ca, where there is no waitlist and no snow