The intersection of pharmacy leadership and management with clinical skills: Education plays a key role

Abstract

Introduction: Clinical pharmacy service expansion is a challenge of scalability, and education can play a big part in the profession's transition to patient care. Underdeveloped staff management and leadership skills may prohibit scalability of innovative patient care service models observed in research and academic pharmacy environments.

Commentary: In today's rapidly evolving healthcare industry, formal education in leadership and management may provide the prerequisite skills for frontline pharmacists to innovate and scale clinical care services thereby improving quality patient outcomes. One important component of this is the use of pharmacist-extenders and team-based task delegation to eliminate technical tasks from the pharmacist's workload and maximize time spent in functions requiring professional judgment.

Implications: The Academy should develop leadership and management skills in tandem with patient care-related skills to optimize care delivery. Specifically, pharmacy educators should lean into concepts of organizational behavior and evidence-based management. The future of pharmacy is highly dependent on future pharmacist leaders; development of successful leaders is imperative to the profession of pharmacy.

Keywords: Delegation; Education; Leadership; Management; Pharmacy.