Monday, July 9, 2012

Chief Pharmacist: From my lips to God's Ears


If I became the Chief Pharmacist today, first I will create a crisis by refusing to be a registrar of a Board that is another full time job in itself. I will be happy to be an ex-officio member of the Board, and I must not go there all the time because I have qualified deputies. I will then lobby to my Minister (or is it cabinet secretary?) to go to parliament to reduce my roles, if he ever wants me to deliver.

Then, I will have a national pharmacy strategy that aims to improve health from my department’s perspective. My strategy will and should be feeding to the larger strategy of the ministry responsible for health, and not standalone. I will make sure every person contributing to pharmaceutical services: pharmacists, technologists and other techs, and subordinates know this strategy and they have memorized it in their brains and hearts.

 If there is no strategy in place when I step into office on my first day or if the current strategy is in conflict with national strategy, I'll start addressing by addressing that. I will work through deputies who will have all the power to do what they deem fit for pharmacy; I will only ask them to be accountable and put their money where their mouth is.

I believe in human resource. The pharmacists under me must be the most competent in the world. They must be good public speakers, must be able to educate patients and public on the health, they should be able to engage constructively on general health issues and they must be able to design, test, monitor and improve healthcare programs that work. They must know their patients, and they must address their needs, they must be able to communicate understanding to them, they must love them and they must follow them up longitudinally. I will have to sample reports of such on my desk. No training opportunity that can make them the best in the world as a pharmacist can be swept under the carpet by me, because I will have no carpet. All trainings will be on merit, and on value for investment. If you will not do, don’t be trained. If you promise to do, and you don’t; no mechanism to get the value back from you will I spare.

Then I will focus on the needs of Kenyan public, and what they need a pharmacist for. I will not accept pharmacists to do what the Kenyan public does not need them to. I will happily bring to an end the era of 'boss pharmacists' because that is not what the consumers of health that I'm accountable to need.

I will fight for, protect and give pharmacists a larger slice of training opportunities than was allocated. I will not allow others to steal the show, or let DMS or whoever that will assume the responsibilities of the current DMS know more about pharmacy than me. I will not miss his meetings because he intimidates me, but he may miss my meetings because he fears accountability.

 All I will need of the pharmacists I will do anything for is not to embarrass me with apathy, dishonesty with themselves, stealing, empty heads, divided or no loyalties, inability or painstakingly slow minds, poor decision making skills, poor or no customer care, purposeful stagnation, caggy or caged thinking, being experts of anything else other than pharmacy, lack of accountability and personal responsibility, not being able to take advantage of opportunities given and excelling etc etc.

 I will be quick to enforce sanctions as I do with rewards. Finally, I will be on a fixed non-renewable contract of five years (or even four) to give others with better ideas chance to lead. If people really liked me, and want me to go on, I will only accept an advisory position.

I will whisper to my successor that anyone who spends or plans to spend a quarter century in a position is nothing more than a space occupying lesion.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I Like It!! Where do tick?