Pharmacy managers

This is the picture from your powerpoint...

Pharmacy manages are essential to the optimal operation of a pharmacy, whether it be a hospital or community pharmacy. Someone must be the ‘go-to person’ in the pharmacy. This pharmacist is usually responsible for directing subordinates’ day-to-day tasks. The pharmacy manager is usually the one responsible for implementing human resource polices, so their understanding of these policies is essential to the proper functioning of the pharmacy so that it can maintain its competitive edge. Another means by which the pharmacy manager is responsible for maintain the competitive edge is by maintaining the proper inventory and by making sure that all parties involved in pharmaceutical care are up to do on licenses and abide by all laws and regulations affecting pharmacies. The pharmacy manager has a great deal of responsibility resting on his or her shoulders in addition to performing a traditional pharmacist role.

but maybe you should use this picture instead. HaHa

The pharmacy manager is wedged between subordinates (i.e. staff pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) and those that rank higher in the hierarchical pyramid of management (i.e. human resource managers and hospital, store, or district managers). The pharmacy manager plays the bottle neck role between each level of management. They are responsible for making sure that company polices placed forth by those of higher rank are followed by the subordinates. The pharmacy managers also play the role of the bottle neck when it comes to complaints and concerns of the subordinates so that higher ranking managers are not flooded with tasks that other could deal with. In the end, a hierarchical pyramid is utilized so that tasks are distributed to those most apt to deal with them and so that those with more education or experience are not bombarded with tasks that others could do for less cost. It all comes down to maintaining a competitive edge so that the pharmacy is a successful financially as possible. 

Resources:

http://www.thejobexplorer.com/Job_Description/Health_Services/Pharmacy_Manager.html

Disparate impact

Discrimination can be either intentional (disparate treatment) or unintentional (disparate impact). Disparate treatment is when people are intentionally treated differently based on their membership in a protected group. Disparate impact is when there is an unintentional impact on a protected group based on an arbitrary business practice. ¹

One of my summer jobs was working for the park district of my home town. The park district would employ high school and college students to be park leaders in community parks. As a park leader, we were responsible to entertain local children with outdoor recreation and activities such as crafts. Performance evaluations are based on how many people attend park events. In most cases, white employees were set to work at parks with mostly white children in the neighborhoods surrounding the parks and black employees were set to work in parks surrounded by mostly black neighborhoods. I assume that managers set it up this way so that the neighborhood parks were set up with someone more likely to be a part of that neighborhood and to integrate into that neighborhood better, but this created a disparate impact situation. The situation arose because since performance was evaluated on then number of people attending park events, white employees were promoted more often than their black counterparts. This was because the “white parks” were more in upper middle class neighborhood where there were more stay-at-home moms that had the time to be more involved in park events.

Even though the park district had good interest in mind when placing park leaders at certain parks, their methods resulted in disparate impact. To my knowledge, no legal cases have been filed against the park district, but after taking Human Resource Management, I would not be surprised if cases had been filed since there is a just reason to file a complaint. 

1.        Kleiman, Lawrence S. "Understanding the Legal and Enviromental Context of HRM." Human Resource Management: a Managerial Tool for Competitive Advantage. Cincinnati: Atomic Dog Pub., 2007. 32. Print.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is defined as ‘unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature.’ After working in the community pharmacy setting, I have had an up close look at how sexual harassment can have a negative effect on the work environment as a whole. ¹

While working one summer at a chain grocery store pharmacy, I started to pick up on some quirks between the pharmacy manager and a fellow technician. The pharmacist would ‘surprise’ this specific technician with small gifts for her birthday, other holidays, and sometimes ‘just because.’ The gifts initially started out as innocent things such as iced coffee, small boxes of chocolates, and gift cards. The technician always found it a little odd that she was the only employee that received the gifts, but she still accepted them none the less. During the same period that she was receiving gifts, the pharmacist would also attempt to walk her out to her car when her shift was over. The gifts then became more of the sexual nature such as furry handcuffs and personal lubricants. At this point the technician began to feel uncomfortable with the pharmacist’s advances and while he would walk her out to her car he would attempt to ‘make a move’ of the physical nature. The technician began documenting all of the advances that the pharmacist made and reported it to the human resource manager and the pharmacist was eventually terminated.

In the meantime between when the unwelcome sexual advance began and when the pharmacist was terminated, the work environment was extremely uncomfortable for all of the other technicians and pharmacists. We all experiences anxiety and it created a low morale at work. I felt like we had lack of productivity as well because everyone in the pharmacy was always talking about what ‘creepy’ thing the pharmacist did this week instead of focusing on the task at hand of patient care. The level of teamwork also decreased as the technician that was being harassed was (expectedly) unwilling to work well with the pharmacist that was harassing her.

After that summer of working, I quickly learned the meaning of sexual harassment and how it can have a negative impact on all involved. 

1.       Kleiman, Lawrence S. "Complying with Workplace Justice Laws." Human Resource Management: a Managerial Tool for Competitive Advantage. Cincinnati: Atomic Dog Pub., 2007. 330. Print.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is designed to eradicate employment discrimination based on a number of protected classes including race, gender, national origin, age religion and disability. One of the furthest reaching protected classes though is race. The commission aims to eliminate discrimination in the forms of unequal employment, development, advancement and treatment. Discrimination cannot be based on the race of the applicant or employee’s spouse. 

I expect that the number of discrimination cases based on the race of a spouse will decrease as the number of American accepting of interracial marriages increase. A recent CNN article states that a record 86% of American’s are not accepting of marriages between blacks and whites. The younger generation of Americans (age 18-37) are the most approving with 97% while only 61% older Americans (age 70+) only approve of interracial marriage. 

I would expect that since more of this Baby Boomer generation is beginning to retire, racial discrimination based on the race of a spouse would decrease since this group would no longer be in the workforce. Since 18-37 year olds are the most accepting of interracial marriage, and this age group is expected to be a larger part of the workforce in coming years, the race of a spouse should be less of an EEOC discrimination issue. Another major reason that I believe that racial discrimination is on the decline is because the article shows that the acceptance of interracial marriage is trending towards being more acceptable by the general public. 

Reference:

Jones, Jeffrey M. "Record-high 86% Approve of Black-white Marriages – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs." Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs. CNN.com, 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 16 Sept. 2011. <http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/record-high-86-approve-of-black-white-marriages/>.

Unionization

A ‘trade union’ is defined as, "An organization whose membership consists for workers and union leaders, united to protect and promote their common interests."¹

According to this article in PubMed, the interest in pharmacist unions is increasing. The study found a difference in wages, benefits, and working conditions when comparing union and non-union workers. Eight percent of pharmacists in the study were already unionized and of those that participated in the study 18% of non-union pharmacist would vote for unionization in their workplace if given the opportunity. With numbers like these the ability of unions to have far-reaching effects on pharmacy is clear. Will the impact of unions be positive or negative though for the practice of pharmacy as a whole?

The frequently asked questions section in the website of a major pharmacist union draws clear advantages of being a unionized pharmacist. These include shaping the salaries of pharmacists by stating that, “If it weren't for the union…employers would pay as little as they could get away with.” Other benefits of this specific union are that promotions are based on seniority, help with grievance procedures, and improved working conditions.² Based on the amount of time spent discussing each advantage, it seems to the reader that the union is most concerned with increasing the salary of unionized pharmacists with minimal concern for safer work environments. 

While I agree that safe work environments are important for pharmacists, I do not agree with the idea that unions should be able to shape the salaries of pharmacists by using their collective bargaining power. This increase of salaries is not beneficial for the general pharmacist workforce as demonstrated in the following graphic.³

Basic macroeconomic supply and demand prove that in a free market economy,  which we have in the United States , a balance exist between the number of employed and the salary of those employees. Maximal profit is made by pharmacist as a whole where the number of employable pharmacists (E1) and the free market wages of those pharmacists (W1) line up. The pharmacist unions push to artificially inflate the salary of the pharmacists. This salary inflation is demonstrated by the W2 line. If one were to follow the supply and demand curve over, he or she would see that this raise in salary corresponds to a decrease in the number of pharmacists employed and pharmacists’ profits are not maximized.  Unionization may be beneficial in the short term, but in the long term as unions constantly seek to increase salaries of pharmacists, the number of pharmacist jobs will be decreased as it follows the supply and demand curve.

While unions may be beneficial in regards to safer work environments, I feel that this is not the main priority of 21^st century unions. Their main objective is to increase the wages of pharmacist, which as discussed, will eventually lead to a substantial negative impact on the pharmacy profession as a whole. 

Sources:
1.  "What Is Trade Union? Definition and Meaning." BusinessDictionary.com - Online Business Dictionary. BusinessDictionary. Web. 07 Sept. 2011. <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/trade-union.html>.
2. "Frequently Asked Questions." National Pharmacists Association (NPhA). National Pharmacists Association (NPhA). Web. 07 Sept. 2011. <http://www.npha.com/>.
3. Riley, Geoff. Labour Market - Demand for Labour. Digital image. A2 Markets & Market Systems. Tutor2u, Sept. 2006. Web. 07 Sept. 2011. <http://tutor2u.net/economics/revision-notes/a2-micro-demand-for-labour.html>.