From the Director’s Desk: “The Choice is Yours!”

When it comes to employee management, I can’t say that I had much experience before I became a small rural hospital pharmacy director in 2012.  Most of my management abilities came from the leadership skills acquired in my upbringing and the rest is left to my experience with trial and error. Although the process of trial and error can be difficult, my failures and successes have helped me to feel empowered, provide job satisfaction and help me find meaning in my everyday work.  This type of empowerment is what I want to share with my staff so they can reap the benefits of trial and error and true feelings of empowerment. 

 

On occasion, when I want to get the message across that I am confident in the judgement of my team and when I want my team to be autonomous in their decision making, I place the HCL catalog on their desk with a sticky note that says “the choice is yours!” My employees know that with HCL and its custom solutions, the options are limitless.  If they can think of a solution, HCL will have a team work with them to develop a product or find a similar solution. 

 

A recent example includes some remodeling done in our hazardous drug cleanroom. We needed a better stainless steel storage solution and I left it to a technician and pharmacist to design this space.  Another recent example is HCL’s ability to custom print any size and color of reclosable bags.  We recently began purchasing 503B-prepared OR syringes and due to the similar appearance of many of them, the technicians had bags designed with a paralytic warning to more safely organize our anesthesia workstations

 

Often times our pharmacy team is faced with an operational dilemma and everyone looks to me for an answer.  Although I am happy and willing to lead, I have realized that when the dilemmas and the solutions are given to the team, the result is quicker, the growth is deeper and the overall job satisfaction is greater. I empower them by not only giving them control over how they do their job, but also making sure they feel confident in their abilities to do their jobs well. When pharmacy staff members sense that their work is meaningful and impactful, they feel more empowered, which directly combats feelings of burnout that are prevalent in today’s healthcare setting.