As the year comes to an end, I begin to reflect on what has been achieved, by my team, in 2014. I believe I say this each year … this year has gone so quick! Age may reflect on the swift passing of the year. I suppose hitting the big 40, I can start blaming age for many things! Getting my NHS Health Check invite certainly hit home that I am a patient, not just a professional. This is why I want to make sure the public gets the most out of their pharmacy and what pharmacists can deliver.
The year 2014, has been a year that has turned around pharmacy for me personally. Achievements made, have shown great changes within my pharmacy world, as I know it. A few of the greatest changes have been with my engagement on social media, our website, innovative services, professional development and new positions to influence change; for the greater good of pharmacy.
I have been surrounded by interesting and very influential people, and have been honoured to sit around the same table, discussing how to get the best out of pharmacy, nationally. To even be at these tables of power and influence has been a great experience, and certainly a huge learning curve. I knew pharmacy needs to pull up its socks; what I didn’t realise is, by what scale – HUGE!!
My whole approach towards my daily pharmacy activities have altered. As a pharmacist I have always been service orientated. It’s only in the last 4 years I stopped delivering services personally, and invested in training my team to deliver them. It took a great leap of faith and certainly a transformation in behaviour to give these up to the staff. I won’t lie, initially it was chaos! Not only that, I felt lost … my control had gone. I had staff leave, as all they wanted to do was their usual ‘retail’ processes. I almost gave up ‘delegating’, but soon, especially after careful and informed recruitment of staff, the rewards started filtering through.
I learnt two important things in that process.
1. Recruitment of the right people is essential
2. Setting expectations from the team at the onset is crucial
Services can only be delivered by freeing up yourself to be a pharmacist, by taking on a team that knows what you expect from them, staff to have the ability to learn, and you, as the leader, to provide the resources for their success.
So four years in, with great engagement from my team with the public, has now been established. I’m not saying its perfect! We have glitches such as staff turnover, staff sickness, holidays and those Monday morning starts that everyone hates. Sometimes, its just too busy in the dispensary to spare the time, but we try and look at solutions on a regular basis as a team. The key is to implement these changes immediately; so habits can adapt to the new way.
What I only realised this year, is with all the efforts in delivering, engaging, training, mentoring, coaching and highlighting what pharmacy can do … I can’t easily show data! How can I prove pharmacy worth?!
I have the data … but I can’t show it easily. There are so many factors that influence this. Time, resources, systems, IT, investment and expertise.
My focus for 2015 is to combat this. Somehow, collectively get pharmacies to delivery, but to synchronise data collection that can then be analysed and reported to show exactly what each service, training or event has produced as outcomes.
I may end up like Tom Cruise, in Jerry Maguire, screaming … “SHOW ME THE DATA!”
#ASKdP
