Pharmacies are a distribution system for medicines and patients trust you to be part of their healthcare team. Any form of clutter and inefficiency lead to stress for you or your staff and in the end, it leaves a negative impression on your patients. If you take care of your space, patients will get the impression that you can care for their health too.
Reorganising
By eliminating clutter, organizing the things you need and creating scheduling tools, you and your staff will have time and space to prioritize tasks and accomplish more.
Start with the physical space
De-cluttering is key. By getting rid of items that you don’t use or need, you will be able to create a cleaner and more comfortable environment for your working staff as well as your patients. Less clutter also means you’ll have easier access to the things you use regularly. By having a place for everything, you’ll eliminate unnecessary purchasing of things you already have that are misplaced. Continue by organizing your workspace. Tidy up the stack of papers on your desk and sort unanswered mail. Encourage your staff members of the pharmacy to do the same with their workspaces.
Once your work area is physically in order, it’s so much easier to organize your thoughts and prioritize your to-do list. Then, move on to organizing the front and back ends of your pharmacy. Go through file cabinets, expired products and all shelves. Decide what to keep and what to trash. The more streamlined you can make every aspect of your physical store, the better. Clutter not only makes it difficult to work, but it gives patients a negative impression of your store environment, which will eventually lead to bad sales.
Creating a system
Create an intuitive system that you and all your staff can understand for different aspects of your pharmacy. For example, putting a system in “pharmacy shelf dividers” for your pharmacy’s front-end layout makes it easier to restock products and to direct patients to the items they’re looking for.
Other aspects of your pharmacy that can benefit from a system include bookkeeping, staff training and product ordering. Systems that train new staff members in a consistent manner will make your pharmacy run smoother because everyone will work with the same protocols.
The more responsibilities you can turn into a system, the easier it will be to run—and maintain—your pharmacy.
