I have been harping on Value as they gateway to survival in the profession of pharmacy for the past 6 years.
I have been teaching my students that if they don’t create value they are likely to become obsolete. I have been badgering the Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Education to include value creation as a critical skill component of every pharmacists training. And I have been fortunate enough to partner with Shane Desselle and David Zgarrick to edit the only pharmacy management textbook that focuses on Value Creation as a core skill, Pharmacy Management, Essentials for all Practice Settings Third Edition. I have published articles on Value Theory including a major piece in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy. And I have written two commercial books based on this theory of value creation, The Bosshole Effect, and Ten Things a New Manager Must Get Right from the Start!. And last summer Dave Zgarrick and I presented at the International Social Pharmacy Workshop in Boston to pharmacy educators from around the world, a special session on Value Creation theory as the backbone for pharmacy instruction in a management course.
So needless to say I think the story for the next generation is going to be , How do you create value in the marketplace for professional pharmacy services?
I don’t know if you have seen this video or not but it seems like the world is beginning to take notice. In this video a good friend of mine, Joe Moose, I have to say that because is also my wife’s boss, just made the case for value in a powerful way. Joe is one of the most innovative pharmacists you will ever meet. And refuses to stay rooted in the past, while at the same time honoring the traditions of where we have come from.
If you care about the future of our profession you need to spend 13 minutes and watch this video. Pharmacy education is heavily weighted in our clinical training towards acute care. This is not because our faculty dislike community care it is because their clinical expertise and training pushes in that direction. But while obviously hospital based acute care is an excellent teaching environment students often lack exposure to the clinical nature of community practice. Innovative pharmacist like the Moose brothers are chaining that paradigm.
Here is the upshot our pharmacist colleagues in acute care save peoples lives and do great things. But they only have people under their care for a few short days or weeks of their lives. The rest of the time those folks are in the community where community practice clinicians need to coach people through managing their care plans. An effective health care system requires a clean and robust handoff from the acute care team to to community care team.
Yes these are trying times. Lots of change is in the air. But its time to stop whining about it and start fixing it. Ultimately pharmacist are going to be paid or not paid based upon whether or not they provide value to the stakeholders they serve.
Watch this video and then share it with everyone you know. Great job Joe of taking this battle to the next step. And a strong shout out to the National Community Pharmacist Association for bringing this together.
