Leadership Succession Preparedness and Sense of Urgency in Canadian Hospital Pharmacy.

BACKGROUND: Leadership turnover is unavoidable in all organizations, including hospital pharmacy departments. Succession planning can promote organizational stability, among other benefits. OBJECTIVES: To gather a contemporary, nationwide measure of the level of preparedness for department leadership succession and to gain related insight from a variety of pharmacy leaders. METHODS: This study was an environmental scan of Canadian hospital pharmacy leaders. An online survey was conducted to identify the current rate of succession planning; to describe existing succession plans; to determine the perceived need for succession planning; and to describe strategies for, barriers to, and facilitators of succession planning. RESULTS: Eighty-three responses were received. Thirteen respondents (16%) reported that their hospital pharmacy departments had a succession plan, and 13 (16%) of individuals had known successors. Most respondents (64/75 [85%]) perceived succession plans to be rare or nonexistent across Canada. However, 72% (54/75) felt that succession planning was needed for their own leadership position. The most common barriers to succession planning were a lack of formal structure or tools, lack of plan implementation, unionization, and lack of career ladder positions. Select facilitators to succession planning identified by respondents were having a strong existing leadership and having an abundant pool of capable successors. CONCLUSIONS: Most Canadian hospital pharmacy departments and individual leaders represented in this survey were not prepared with succession plans. A collective effort to proactively enact succession planning in Canadian hospital pharmacy departments would have multiple benefits for existing and aspiring leaders and, ultimately, the profession as a whole.

CONTEXTE: Tout organisme, y compris les services de pharmacie d'hôpitaux, fait face au renouvellement inévitable de sa direction. La planification de la relève peut, entre autres avantages, favoriser la stabilité organisationnelle. OBJECTIFS: Brosser un portrait national et actuel de la capacité des services de pharmacie de faire face au renouvellement de leur direction et obtenir le point de vue de différents leaders en pharmacie sur le sujet. MÉTHODES: La présente étude est une analyse du contexte des leaders en pharmacie hospitalière du Canada. Un sondage en ligne a permis de déterminer le degré actuel de planification de la relève, de décrire les plans de relève mis en place, de déterminer dans quelle mesure une planification de la relève est nécessaire et de décrire les stratégies à adopter pour mener une planification de la relève ainsi que les éléments y faisant obstacle ou la facilitant. RÉSULTATS: Les investigateurs ont reçu 83 réponses. Treize répondants (16 %) ont indiqué que les services de pharmacie de leur hôpital possédaient un plan de relève et tous les 13 (16 %) connaissaient les successeurs. La plupart des répondants (64/75 [85 %]) croyaient que les plans de relève étaient rares, voire inexistants, au Canada. Cependant, 72 % (54/75) estimaient que leur poste de direction nécessitait une planification de la relève. Les obstacles à la planification de la relève le plus souvent évoqués étaient : l'absence de structure ou d'outils formels, l'absence de mise en oeuvre d'un plan, la syndicalisation et le manque de postes offrant des possibilités d'avancement. Parmi les éléments facilitant la planification de la relève, les répondants ont mentionné : la présence d'un leadership fort et l'accès à un important bassin de candidats compétents. CONCLUSIONS: La plupart des services de pharmacie d'hôpitaux canadiens et des dirigeants représentés dans le sondage n'étaient pas en mesure de s'appuyer sur un plan de relève. Un travail collectif de mise en oeuvre proactive d'une planification de la relève dans les services de pharmacie d'hôpitaux canadiens aurait de multiples avantages pour les dirigeants en place et ceux appelés à le devenir et, ultimement, pour la profession dans son ensemble.

Leadership and Management Are One and the Same.

Defining the attributes of change catalysts within high functioning organizations, including the academic enterprise, is desirable. An understanding of these attributes within our academy may foster faculty interest and engagement in seeking administrative roles and serve to bolster succession planning within our schools. On one hand, there have been numerous publications teasing out the purported differences between leadership and management. On the other hand, does segregating these important characteristics based upon arbitrary distinctions do more harm than good? This commentary represents the work of a group of academic leaders participating in the 2015-2016 AACP Academic Leadership Fellowship Program. This work was presented as a debate at the 2016 AACP Interim Meeting in Tampa, Florida, in February 2016.

Status and recommendations for self-care instruction in US colleges and schools of pharmacy, 2006.

Teachers of pharmacy self-care courses have met annually since 1998 at the Nonprescription Medicines Academy (NMA) held in Cincinnati, Ohio. During these meetings, self-care faculty members discuss methods of enhancing the teaching of self-care in US colleges and schools of pharmacy. Self-care courses are taught using a variety of methods and content is woven into pharmacy curricula in many different ways. This manuscript sets forth the current state of self-care instruction in pharmacy curricula including the recommended core curriculum, instructional methodologies, course mechanics, existing standards, and assessment and curricular placement, and makes recommendations for the future.

Identification of essential elements in the documentation of pharmacist-provided care.

OBJECTIVES To develop guidelines for the documentation elements that need to be included in any record of pharmacist-provided care to allow the quality of the care to be assessed and to describe the use of these guidelines to improve the quality of pharmacist documentation. DESIGN An initial list of 85 potential documentation elements, developed through a review of the literature, was validated by a group of pharmacy practitioners. Then, through three rounds of a Delphi process and a group meeting, a panel of experts reached consensus on a refined list of 27 documentation data elements. RESULTS The documentation elements were formatted into a one-page Tool for Evaluation of Documentation (TED). The TED is a checklist for assessing the completeness of the documentation of pharmacist-provided care. CONCLUSION The TED and the consensus-building methodology used in the development of this tool can serve as cornerstones of a quality assessment process for documentation of pharmacist-provided care, enable further assessment of the quality of care, and, ultimately, be used to measure the impact of pharmacist-provided care on patient outcomes. Our results should provide guidance both to pharmacists providing care and to organizations that assess the quality of that care.