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The Benchmark for Initiating Pharmacy Students and Established Pharmacists to the Management Sciences, October 18, 2011
This review is from: Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings, Second Edition (Paperback)
This is a review of the SECOND edition of "Pharmacy Management".
Co-editors Deselle and Zgarrick have assembled an impressive caste of thirty-six co-authors to present a reasonably thorough overview of management, as it relates to the profession of pharmacy. All authors seem to have firm foundations in academic and/or community pharmacy practice, but have also esteemed themselves as masters of various areas of management theory, particularly as it pertains to healthcare. No one textbook could possibly explain all of management theory and practice in any setting, but the authors do as good a job as any I have seen. In my search of Amazon.com, I could only find at most seven books published in this century that may cover the same wide territory.
My perspective is that of a Canadian physician, certified in lab medicine and primary care, with a master's degree of science in computer engineering, who has recently taken management courses in general management, human resources, marketing and accounting. My current thrust is an entrepreneurial venture that initially did not involve pharmacy but I hypothesized would work better if pharmacy was included in the marketing mix. That led me to read this book. "Pharmacy Management, Second Edition" is the management textbook for the pharmacy school nearest me (the last Canadian book on this topic was published in 1998). My own benchmarks for this review/book report are: "Fundamentals of Management" by Stephen Robbins et al and "Basic Marketing" by William Perrault et al. These are Canadian editions of highly-regarded American textbooks, with Canadian and American co-authors.
I learned a lot from reading this textbook even after taking as many management courses as I have. (I did not take a management course from the pharmacy school or any other healthcare-related faculty, just general business courses from a local college). The authors touch on many of the same issues as general textbooks; re-affirming for me the point that there are established universal principles of management (it's not voodoo) and even covering important topics neglected by some mainstream texts (e.g; risk management). The use of examples from pharmacy were still germane to me as a healthcare professional.
The editors have set out to give the final-year pharmacy student and the uninitiated pharmacy practitioner a bird's eye view of the essentials of management theory. It provides an excellent frame of reference for the time-challenged busy healthcare professional who has not studied management sciences before in a formal setting. Caveat emptor! It is impossible for just one book on management to produce a competent manager by itself, and the student of management is advised to take more specific courses as the next step (e.g; human resources, marketing, accounting, etc). This does not necessitate obtaining a MBA, although this would be a commendable approach.
The book consists of thirty-four chapters organized into eight sections, with one or two sections covering an individual managerial science of import.The editors use a combination of didactic instruction and case method. In the first few sections, each chapter is built around a case divided into two parts. The first half of the case is presented at the beginning of the chapter as a challenge, then a particular management theme is presented, then the resolution of the challenge, based on the material presented, closes the chapter. Towards the end of the book, the case method takes over with more scenarios woven tightly into the text of each chapter. Goals are established at the beginning of each chapter and open-ended questions of varying depth are posed to the reader at the beginning and the end.
The book almost seems to have been written and re-written three times: 1) universal management theory is discussed 2) it is presented in the context of pharmacy as a service industry (useful for any health professional wanting to learn about management) 3) the editors steer the discussion not only towards how application of good management can bolster the pharmacy profession but also outline a set of specific strategies they hope will advance the profession in these trying times of great external pressures (more on this later).
My initial criticisms are the text could be less wordy and use more illustrations and diagrams to make its points (see my two benchmark texts mentioned above for examples). The charts and tables that are presented are largely very good and to the point. As is pretty much the case of all multi-authored textbooks, there is overlap with repetition of material, some awkward imbalances (e.g; marketing planning is not listed on the chart on p. 34, but gets several chapters of its own later on), and a tendency for each author to include as much as they can about their speciality area in their assigned chapters.
Two chapters, Chapter 13 Time Organization and Chapter 19 Personal Finance, do not belong in this book. The editors seem to have included them in an effort to develop better pharmacists as individuals, thus hoping to get a better manager. A laudable goal if I am right, but this has nothing to do with the management sciences proper. They belong in a separate text and course which might be called: "Self-actualization for the Pharmacy Graduate" which could cover these and many more related topics.
Chapter 2 gives a concise summation of what the management function is, and is congruent with what non-healthcare management academics have written. Chapter 3 on Strategic Planning is also well-done.
Chapter 4 Business Planning was welcome for me. Most books on business planning are over-inclusive and make it difficult to know where to start and what to work on. Drs Shumock and Wong tighten the focus for service industries in general and pharmacy in particular. The list on p. 60 was most helpful for me.
Chapter 5 General Operations Management addresses most operation issues as seen through the lens of pharmacy. This chapter would also be a useful guide for drafting the operations plan (which is usually its own section in a business plan).
Chapter 6 is the Information Technology (IT) chapter, arguably the fastest changing area of all management. The two co-authors have given a good overview of IT especially as it relates to specific pharmacy points. They have also included some very useful references and websites. Mercifully, unlike other management authors, the co-authors have not tried to show how to design a website (it is now more appropriate to think in terms of "developing a web presence" of which a website is just a part), a discipline that requires exacting detail to do well and is beyond the scope of a management textbook. In my view, important and relevant IT developments since the publication of this book (as of this writing, the fall of 2011) are the explosive growth of cloud computing, the rise of tablet computing, even more powerful smart phones, the proliferation of mobile and tablet "apps" and the sudden affordability (for small businesses) of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in the form of open-source applications. All of these combine to create the most powerful and efficient mobile virtual organization yet. Search engine optimization and the social media marketing are not covered, but have grown exponentially in profile since the publication of this edition. These would merit discussion in the context of pharmacy in a future edition, as well as a discussion of the differences between management information systems and ERP.
Chapter 7 covers Quality Assurance. This can be a vexing and ethereal discipline because it seems to always require painstaking customization for every scenario. Dr. Warholak provides the reader with an overview of the major established approaches framed to meet the peculiarities of pharmacy. Surprisingly, she makes a throwaway reference to Six Sigma, a quality assurance approach more suited for large-scale manufacturing than most pharmacy situations. So-called Human Sigma (see 2007 book by John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund) would be more relevant to labour-intensive healthcare organizations. I also wonder if this chapter could have been combined with the section on risk management.
Chapter 8 Organization Structure and Behavior is solid. It addresses classic and contemporary approaches to this topic in a way I recognize in other more general textbooks. Dr. Gaither explains it well, framed in the context of pharmacy.
Chapter 9 Human Resources Management must rise to the challenge of covering the pertinent facets of managing the most important pharmacy resource. All management textbooks must orient the student to HR, but in my view this can never be learned adequately without taking at least one dedicated course in HR. Dr. Holdford does a good job, and more information about HR comes out in the Applications section at the end of the book.
Chapter 10 Performance Appraisal. Dr. Deselle does a great job on an area everyone seems to loathe doing and avoids. General human resources textbooks usually lay out the long list of methods of appraisal as a buffet, and leave it for the reader to choose an approach. Dr. Deselle offers guidance as to what works best in pharmacy.
Chapter 11 Customer Service is often not directly addressed in many management texts (examples are often of a good, not of a service) so this chapter is a gem for the healthcare professional.
Chapter 12 Contemporary Workplace Issues is a pot-pourri of important issues that are hard to classify but demand attention.
Chapter 14 Leadership examines the anatomy of leadership, like most texts do, trying to lead the reader into insights about this abstract management issue. Its a tough area to tackle because it is so abstract, but Dr...
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