Pharmacist-In-Charge Major Report

MAJOR REPORT SP4, 2020

The scenario is that you have been made pharmacist-in-charge (PIC) of an independent rural pharmacy (comprising 2 other pharmacists and 5 assistants), about 3 hours north of Adelaide. There is another pharmacy which is situated at the other end of this mid-sized town. Your pharmacy is situated at the end of town closest to Adelaide. The clientele consists of mainly farmers and families, who make up 60% of your business, plus 20% indigenous, and historically 20% tourists, both local and international, who used to visit before the pandemic. The number of local tourists is expected to increase greatly once travel restrictions within Australia are lifted, but international travel may be restricted until mid-2021.

a)      Spend about 450- 500 words on each of the following topics

                                                 i.    Accounting / Finance: Discuss the importance of cash flow to the pharmacy and why major accounting reports may not provide the information you need to monitor this.

                                                ii.    Implementing a Creative environment: The owner of the pharmacy wants you to encourage creativity amongst the staff in the hope that it may produce some ideas that may be used for marketing purposes.

                                              iii.    Leadership: Outline how you, personally, would attempt to develop a transformational leadership style to lead the staff, comprising the 2 other pharmacists and 5 assistants, giving details.

                                              iv.    Marketing: How would you go about developing a general marketing plan to come up with a campaign to offer something different from the competitors?             (Ensure you refer to the scenario)

                                           v.     Motivation : Alice, one of the 5 pharmacy assistants, is in her early fifties and the oldest employee at the pharmacy. She has been divorced 3 times and is currently single. She has one son in his mid-20s who is currently in prison for drug-related offences. Alice has not worked much, since she had been supported by her husbands previously who generally wanted her to stay at home. Her only limited work experience has been in supermarkets, a fashion store and as a telemarketer. This is the first time she has worked in a pharmacy and she has only been there for 6 months. Sometimes she is a bit loud, and she loves talking about her extensive cruise experiences when she used to be married. You note she tends to wear highly fashionable clothes, and all her outfits are low cut. She enjoys talking to older male farmers who she believes may be wealthy and tries to get to know a bit about their personal background when they visit the pharmacy. You note that she seems bored with the routine of assisting with the dispensary of scripts and managing stock. Her knowledge of pharmacy products appears quite limited and she makes errors. Since the pharmacy is open 7 days a week due to it being an essential service there needs to be some flexibility regarding availability, but Alice always has reasons to not work on Saturday and Sunday mornings due to “prior engagements”, although there does not seem to be to do much to do in this country town these days. In any spare times she loves to read fashion magazines and she has mentioned that she believes she is creative. She tends to have a smoke outside during any breaks she has, but some customers have complained about her nicotine-breath to you. You wonder why she was employed by the owner in the first place, only to find out she is the owner’s sister. Explain how you would apply the Behaviour Modification model on Alice to modify her behaviour to what you consider would benefit the pharmacy.

                                         vi.    Change: To compete with other pharmacies in general which have a focus on discount, the owner has asked you to organise all staff to learn Arabic, Chinese and Hindi, since they believe Australia, and especially South Australia, will become a magnet for overseas tourists (due to our control of the corona virus), and once international travel restrictions have been lifted. What would you do to overcome staff resistance to this change?

b)      Rank the 6 topics from 1 to 6 in terms of which skill/ ability / knowledge you consider most valuable for a community pharmacist, giving reasons for each choice and why each one was ranked the position it was. Try to support your responses with the literature.

Writing the report:

·         Use Headings.

·         Type double-spaced for ease of reading and marking.

·         Be clear in your explanations and try to be as specific as possible rather than giving generic comments.

·         Make sure the literature is integrated by supporting your comments with reference to the literature.

·         Reference your material whenever you are stating something that is not generally known. (Check every sentence.) If you do not you may be penalised for plagiarism.

·         Use the Harvard style of referencing: author (year).

·         Include a reference list at the end.

NOTES ABOUT THE ASSIGNMENT
This is to be an individual assignment. You may, for example, discuss the topic with others in the class, but you must produce an individual assignment which is your own work. Not to do so is plagiarism.

A minimum of 15 different academic references is required. (This means academic (peer reviewed/ refereed) journals and text-books, but excludes everything else, such as lectures, general web-sites such as consultancies’ promotional web-sites, government websites, company websites and sources like Wikipedia.)

Keep a copy of your assignment.

It must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document and should have student names and IDs listed on each page since no cover sheet is required.

 Evidence of plagiarism will cause a penalty, which may include a zero for the report.