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A Call to Arms – Your Next Fight for Survival
In our last edition our lead article COSBA Support for Pharmacists Owning Pharmacies may not have attracted your attention and the significance of a different type of threat to the survival of pharmacy. We were interested to note that at least one pharmacist was alert to these circumstances and posted to the Auspharmlist Bulletin Board who noted…
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Good leaders ask great questions
Two leaders whom I respect a great deal and whose work I have studied both stress the importance of asking questions to find answers that will unlock your success. Dale Carnegie wrote about the ten ways to be a leader. Number four is to ask questions. John Maxwell in April of this year was named…
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COSBA Support for Pharmacists Owning Pharmacies
Peter Strong is the name of the chief executive of the Council of Small Business of Australia, and he was invited to address the National Press Club recently about Australia’s economic health. Given that political parties of all flavours acknowledge small business as being the driver of employment and innovation within Australia’s economy, it was…
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Marketing Focus – 1. Australia is on sale 2. Reward for effort 3. Postcode Discriminatory Pricing 4. Aldi under attack
Australia is on Sale. There are signs of it everywhere…….. “EOFY Sale” Significantly, one adjective – “door-buster” – has lapsed into disuse, because of widespread disinterest and apathy. The concept of the financial year is an artificial construct, like the widespread recognition assigned to Sales. The use of seasonal factors, like “winter” or operational considerations such as…
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More Father’s Day advice – from readers
Several weeks ago I used this column to share lessons I learned from my parents in recognition of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. My intention was to honor mothers and fathers everywhere for the wisdom they impart to their children. The column apparently struck a chord, because I had a record response from readers about…
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I’ve been thinking about how the work we do today may impact the world we live in tomorrow
This afternoon, I received an e-mail from my friend George Laurer (to my right), the inventor of the UPC bar code—the very same code scanned on the items I purchased this morning at Costco and Trader Joe’s. It arrived on the anniversary (June 26, 1974) of the first bar-coded product being scanned at a point…
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Are Your Consumers Customers or Patients?
It seems that as pharmacies become more corporate in nature and larger in total business transacted, the concepts of pharmacy are tested, with the view of providing more financial benefit to the owners, either in the format of paying lowest possible wages to employed pharmacists, illegal removal or manipulation of award requirements (such as meal…
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Provider Numbers are the key to clinical services rollout
A few years ago I read a biography on the life of Joseph Stalin. The story of how Stalin rose to power and then ruled Russia with an unrelenting grasp for thirty years was quite an interesting read. Despite all his paranoia, ordered executions and sending millions to the gulags it is an interesting fact…
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The Gap Report & Its Opportunities
Self Care has been a platform of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia for as long as I can remember. It is good that it is at last receiving government recognition, particularly as it so easily fits a platform of patients taking responsibility for their own care and that the education required for patients is a…
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The APLF – a very quiet organisation
The Australian Pharmacy Liaison Forum (APLF) is a pharmacy umbrella organisation that was born in 2008 amidst political tension between major pharmacy organisations. The fact that it was not needed until that point is testament to the goodwill and collegiality that existed between pharmacists and the various organisations that represented them. Something happened to alter…