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26 BUSINESS THROUGH INNOVATION COMPOUNDING A2021: MOVING ON FROM COVID-SETTING GOALS s 2021 rolls in, it’s a good time to review what’s been achieved in 2020 – the craziest year that anyone has seen in our lifetime – reflecting on what did happen as well as what couldn’t happen, and to recalibrate the action plan for the coming year. For some of us, there’ll be a sense of relief that we got to the end of the year in one piece, and many of your staff may feel like that. But from a business perspective, it’s important to take stock, put together a plan and set some goals for the new year. If you can, consider whether any unfinished goals from last year can be transferred, or maybe these are no longer relevant and something else has taken their place. I think it’s important to consider whether there were any specific barriers to completing those goals. Saying ‘because of Covid’ isn’t enough. It might have been that you lost staff or had to change your hours, or maybe it was because another service in the pharmacy took you away from compounding. There have been several significant changes in pharmacy in the past year that will impact compounding pharmacists, including the implementation of e-scripts and, more noteworthy for compounding, the release of the Quality Care 2020 program, which includes a new dedicated section on compounding. Some of your 2021 goals may be related to these. Whatever you identify as your goals, try to implement the ‘SMART’ system to help you to keep track and measure your results. I’m sure you’ve heard of this, but in case you deleted the acronym from your vocabulary, it stands for: Specific: State exactly what you want to achieve – what, where, why, who. Measurable: How will you evaluate (or demonstrate) to what extent the goal has been met? Attainable: Consider whether this can be achieved. There’s no point in setting yourself up for failure if you don’t have the prerequisites for the task. Relevant: Make sure your goal ties in with your key responsibilities, or that it may in some way align with a bigger picture of what you want to achieve in the pharmacy. Timely: Set realistic target dates to help you successfully complete your goal and give you purpose as you move forward. I think one of the biggest mistakes is to set yourself up for failure by making the goals too difficult to achieve in a timely manner. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course. While no one’s advocating consuming such a creature, this is a useful visual guide to help you consider your way ahead. I often use this when I’m helping to guide pharmacists on starting work on implementing a standard operating procedure (SOP) manual. These are a necessary evil and a requirement of Quality Care, but when pharmacists or technicians see the folder for the first time, they don’t get just a shiver up their spine; it’s more like a bolt of lightning. There are so many sections to consider that it can be overwhelming. So, setting a goal might look like: ‘I need to do the SOP manual’. But a SMART version of this might look more like: ‘I will need my pharmacist Mary to work on preparing the SOP manual ready for our Quality Care audit in July. Mary should be able to get three SOPs done each week, but I will have to allocate a couple of hours for her to do this each week. I will need to get someone to cover those hours, so it will be important to check what the rosters look like. It will be a good idea to review, in March, how she’s going, in case she needs more resources.’ There are probably many goals such as this one that can be achieved in a timely manner, which will benefit your compounding business as well as be professionally rewarding. Consider something like final product potency testing, which is a new requirement in Quality Care, and how you might use that information to reconnect with your prescribers or validate your processes so that you have more confidence to extend your technicians to work on more complicated compounds, or how you might share your experiences with colleagues in your extended professional domain. Most importantly, don’t forget to check in with your clinical services team to see how they might be able to assist you in achieving greatness in 2021. By Marina Holt. Education and Training Manager PCCA Australia Marina Holt BPharm Dip Quality Auditing Cert IV TAE is the Education and Training Manager at PCCA Australia. Her main role is to give training on all aspects of compounding pharmacy to registered pharmacists and students, and to increase awareness of health professionals on the benefits compounded medications may have for their patients. Inquiries: marina@pccarx.com.au RETAIL PHARMACY • JAN/FEB 2021