The Rewards in Pharmacy Need Work

Spring is well underway, which means I am deep in triathlon training (“are you nuts, WHY?”)

I have many reasons for choosing triathlon; among them the physical challenges and mental preparation, the break from work and winter hockey coaching it provides, the highlighting importance of proper sleep and nutrition and much more.

But there is one thing triathlon always delivers on. There is a theme that runs through each workout, each week of the training plan and each race. And it’s simple: work for your reward.

You can buy alot of expensive gear to look fast. You can go to conferences to plan being fast. You can say you will commit to an insane training, eating and sleeping schedule. But if you want to go faster, you need to put in the work.

And on race day, you always find out.

Like triathlon, the rewards in pharmacy are correlated with the invested work.

Committing to understanding the regular patterns of patient calls, incoming Rx volume, front store traffic, staff habits and potential, seasonal trends and community events provides opportunities to learn what’s coming and shape workflow around the pieces of these within our control.

This takes work. Some pharmacists punch in and wait for the prescriptions to arrive, reactively…