http://georgevanantwerp.com/2012/01/23/why-use-facial-recognition-software-at-the-pharmacy-retention/

http://georgevanantwerp.com/2012/01/23/why-use-facial-recognition-software-at-the-pharmacy-retention/

A blog recently suggested that pharmacists should use facial recognition to better serve patients.  The software could be used to identify patients entering the pharmacy and give pharmacists personalized information with which to greet and serve the patients.

I think that is a great idea!

It can be linked to patient records and other valuable information about buying habits and behaviors (e.g., smoking, snack food purchases).  Of course, it is easy to see how this information can be abused.  But in the right hands, it can do a lot of good.  

CBC.ca | The Age of Persuasion | Season 5: Marketing the Unpleasant

CBC.ca | The Age of Persuasion | Season 5: Marketing the Unpleasant

Pharmacy students are a tough audience.

I constantly search for interesting stories to interject into discussions about marketing pharmaceuticals.

This podcast describes the marketing of things that are not mentioned in polite company.

See for yourself.

How to say "no" without being an asshole -- Lifehacker

http://lifehacker.com/5875337/how-to-say-no-without-being-an-asshole

First, don't be an asshole.

But sometimes a poorly phrased response might make you sound like an asshole even when you aren't.   Note: I just wrote the word "asshole" 4 or 5 times depending on how you count it.

I find the best way to say "no" in a positive way.  For example, instead of saying "No, I don't want to do it.", I say, "Yes, I would love to do it.  Let me check my schedule and get back to you."  This gives me time to make a decision.  If I want to do it, I get back and say "yes".  If not, I get back and say "No. I have a previous engagement."

Comments on Lifehacker's post "How do I quit a job I just started."

http://lifehacker.com/5877886/how-do-i-quit-a-job-i-just-started

A better question is "Why do I want to quit a job I just started?"

If you are a new graduate from pharmacy school, I recommend against ever quitting a job you have just started.  Unless your new employer is a serial killer or has been taken away in handcuffs for war crimes, stick it out for at least one year.

If you made it through four years of pharmacy school, you can survive one year in a job you do not like.  Here is why you need to stay.

1.  Any less than one year looks bad on your resume.
2.  You will learn a lot in any job the first year after graduation.  It might as well be this one.
3.  You probably asked people to write letters of recommendation for you.  Don't make them look like jerks by quitting.
4.  If you make them look like jerks, they will remember.  The pharmacy community is surprisingly small.

This seems a little bit like Woody Allen in the movie "Sleeper"

It's better than reading!!

The future keeps coming at us faster and faster

Should prescription drugs be insured?

Drugs are so expensive these days that it is getting that only the rich can afford them.

I recently spent over 200 dollars for a small tube of ointment at a pharmacy.  I asked the pharmacist for the generic, and she said, "That is the generic."

I used to think that insurance for prescription drugs was unnecessary.  Now I am starting to argue that it is.  The following presentation from slideshare gives my reasoning.

Should prescription drugs be insured

View more presentations from Virginia Commonwealth University

Why insure health care?

Many people who argue against Obamacare don't know what they are talking about.  The same is equally true for those that argue for it.

To inform those individuals and anyone else who may care, I have developed the following slides which ask the question, "Why insure health care?"

Why insure health care?

View more presentations from Virginia Commonwealth University

10 Ways to Frustrate Your Advisor

I teach graduate students in pharmaceutical sciences -- primarily in economics and outcomes research.  These graduate students learn many ideas and skills needed for success in future jobs.  But there are some things that that may cause failure in their future careers.

I have labeled these things "10 ways to frustrate your advisor".  These are the types of things that will annoy any boss and can lead to failure in careers.  Here is what I tell students:

Your advisor wants you to succeed.  If you succeed, your advisor succeeds. 

But he (or she) needs your help.  When your advisor feels like you are not fulfilling your part of the bargain, he will become frustrated.  Want to frustrate your advisor, harm your chance of getting an excellent recommendation after graduation, and hurt his opinion of you?

Do any or all of the following 10 things.

1.  Make excuses.  Excuses are for losers.  Take responsibility, own up to your mistakes, and then move on.

2.  Be afraid to take chances.  Graduate education is about learning.  You learn complex skills by trying new things and taking chances.  If you make a mistake -- learn from it -- and then try something different.

3.  Make the same mistakes over-and-over again.  This means that you are not learning.  Make mistakes, but not the same ones.

4.  Be too sensitive to feedback.  If you are to become a PhD, you need to learn to welcome feedback and criticism.  It too is a part of learning.  If you become sensitive to feedback, you will make it harder for your advisor to teach you what you need to know.  And you will stop learning.  Develop a tough skin and use that feedback to get better.

5.  Waste time.  Time management is critical for success before and after graduation.  Use your most productive times of the day well.  Use your less productive times for tasks that don't need much thought.  Use your school holiday and summer periods well.  You are now in graduate school and wasting those periods is unacceptable.

 6.  Wait to be told what to do.  Each advisor is different.  Some are micromanagers, but most do not provide a lot of guidance.  The freedom you receive from hands-off advisors comes at a cost.  You must find out what to do on your own.  Thus, you need to plan ahead for times when you have no assigned tasks.  Ask yourself, what skills do I need to develop?  What kind of projects can I work on?  How can I use this time well?

7.  Take your TA responsibilities lightly.  If you are a TA, go to the class professor and offer to help.   If you are not contacted immediately, contact the professor periodically to let her know that you want to contribute.  You are being paid very well to be a TA.  It is not a right; it is a privilege.  Provide the university with real value. 

8.  Be rude or selfish.  Graduate education is a collaborative effort.  Rude or selfish behavior reduces learning. 

9.  Wait until your final year before you get serious about managing your career after graduation.  If you wait until just before graduation, you put yourself at a disadvantage.  Starting early can help you develop your curriculum vitae to highlight your capabilities and strengths.  Starting early can help you develop relationships with potential employers or people who can connect you with potential employers. 

10.  Worry about what your advisor thinks.  Of course, you should listen to your advisor, because he is a genius and a fountain of wisdom.  But at some point, you need to reach a point where you care less and less about the opinions of others -- not enough to prevent you from doing what you think is right.  If you become the expert your advisor hopes you will be, you will do what you think is right and ignore what others think.  At that point, you will be ready to graduate. 

Comments on Steve Jobs Commencement Speech

If you have't heard Steve Jobs commencement speech on youtube, I recommend you watch it.

The take-aways from my viewpoint are:

1. Don't go to college if you are not benefiting from it.

2. You are more motivated to learn if you have the choice -- and are not made to do so.

3. Sometimes your greatest failures lead to your greatest successes.

4. Doing what everyone else does will not lead to greatness.

5. Live each day as if it is your last. Because one day, it will.

What should every person know about money?

I still read magazines. I mean real magazines, made of paper, that you can buy at a news stand. One of my favorite magazines, Men's Journal, asks famous people (like Gene Hackman) questions about life such at "Have you ever cheated death?" or "What's the best cure for a heartache?". I like to answer the questions myself before I read the celebre-answer.

This month, they asked "What should every person know about money?". Here's what I think.

Money is a way of keeping score in life -- just not a very good one.

People with more money tend to be considered more successful in life than those without. Still...

"Money" is to "life" like "hits" are to "baseball".

In baseball, the team with the most hits tends to win more often. Not always, because it's possible to get a lot of hits and not score any runs.

And in life, it is possible to fail with a big pile of money, just like it is possible to succeed with little money.

The key is to find better ways of keeping score. Count the number of your friends. Total the number of times you help someone each day. Tabulate the smiles you cause.

Don't ignore money, but don't make it your only scorecard for success.

Marketing to Men -- It's not easy

I gave a recent presentation on marketing to men at a Men's Health Seminar. The main argument of my presentation was that "Marketing to Men -- It's not easy".

I decided not to go with the original title: "Marketing to Men -- It's Hard" to avoid any immature "That's what she said" comments.

We had a big auditorium, a panel of expert presenters (physicians, exercise physiologists, dietary researchers, and me), raffles, free food, and vendors. It was heavily advertised on the radio and TV. Advertisement posters were placed strategically above urinals in key bathrooms across the J. Sargent Reynolds campus (all four). It was well designed and promoted.

How many men do you think attended?

Answer: 15

My point was made. "Marketing to Men -- It's not easy".

Common sense in pharmacy is rarer than you think

Pharmacy students often complain that many of the things I teach are "just common sense."

I typically respond by asking, "if managerial decision making is just common sense, why are good managerial choices so uncommon?"

Don't get me wrong -- there are many excellent managers and pharmacists who make solid decisions day-in-and-day out. However, almost all pharmacists have been on the receiving end of monumental blunders made by co-workers and bosses. In hindsight, many blunders could have been avoided by better decision making processes.

So, how do we improve our decision making?

The first step is do understand the various forms of decisions we face in pharmacy practice.

There are five types of decisions pharmacists face -- legal, clinical, economic, managerial, and ethical. Different inputs and processes go into each.

If we incorrectly identify a problem, we will use the wrong process to solve it. This can result in poor solution.

For instance, if we look at all ethical problems using a legalistic framework, we might make decisions that legally justifiable but morally indefensible.

Identifying knowledge which is "common" in common sense requires a detailed understanding of all five processes of decision making -- legal, clinical, economic, managerial, and ethical.

I suggest that most students and many pharmacists need more knowledge and training to successfully apply common sense to pharmacy problems.

Nurses are the only essential in health care

I know nurses. My mother was a nurse. My sister is a nurse. My brother is a nurse. My sister-in-law is a nurse. My niece is a nurse. My other niece is a nurse. And my beloved wife is a nurse.

Nurses can never be replaced by technology.  Machines may eventually replace many of the tasks done by doctors and pharmacists, but machines will never be able to "care" like nurses.   Nurses are the best!!

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Via:Master Degree Online.com

Thinking your glass as half-full can kill you

National Public Radio had a story recently discussing research on how to live well and long. The story described Helen Reichert, a one-hundred-and-nine-year-old woman who lives at home, has all of her mental abilities, and likes chocolate truffles and Budweiser.

Her doctor, Mark Lachs, attributes her longevity, in part, to her "adaptive confidence".

Adaptive confidence describes one's ability to bounce back from life's stressful moments.

"You don't get to be 109 without life hurling a few curveballs at you, and Reichert has had more than her share: bereavement, gender discrimination, medical issues. And after each, she dusts herself off and moves on."

Adaptive confidence is positively associated with optimism. Optimists have been found to live more than 7 years longer than pessimists -- possibly due to their ability to recover from setbacks.

The lesson from this story is summarized by Dr. Levy who says, "So if you're a boomer and you don't think your outlook on aging has any impact on the rest of your life, you might want to brighten your attitude a bit."

I don't know the future but...

There are a lot of blow hards who predict the future of pharmacy.

Since I was a student, educators and leaders have been saying that pharmacy needs to change. It needs to move from a drug-centric focus to a professional-service-centric focus. Well, we still focus on the drug product.

And we may be product-centric in the future. I don't know.

But I do know that change will occur. One of the reasons is illustrated in this website which totals up the cost of various elements of each taxpayer's tax bill.

Health care's portion of the tax bill is 24%. That is unsustainable.

We can't afford to continue doing things the way we always have. Taxpayers -- including you and me -- will not stand for it.

The only question is, "How will pharmacy change?"

The answer is......beats me.

Crack dealer "Freeway Rick" is intrinsically motivated

This morning, I was listened to a Planet Money podcast interview of Freeway Rick Ross, a former big time drug dealer who talked about the economics of dealing illegal drugs.

Most of the podcast dealt with how making drugs illegal, also made them highly profitable, thereby leading to unintended consequences like violence and crime.

One striking admission by Freeway Rick was his joy in doing the job -- i.e., intrinsic motivation. Rick said, "I loved it...I felt like I was powerful...It was every man's dream to be free...I'd rather be doing that than anything else, almost."

Rick talked about how engaged he was in his job. He enjoyed cooking the drugs. He enjoyed the status it gave. He enjoyed being in control.

Of course, Rick's experiences and his view of the world are quite different from the average pharmacist, but we can learn from Rick.

To be intrinsically motivated, we need autonomy in our jobs. Autonomy encourages responsibility and meaning. We also need to maximize periods of "flow". Flow is a state where you are so engaged in your work that you lose track of time. Flow occurs when we challenge ourselves to achieve goals that stretch ourselves (but not so much that it leads to frustration). Finally, we need to seek mastery of what we do. Mastery encourages feeling so control and achievement. Rather than seeking to master the market for illegal drugs -- we need to master the medication use process for our patients. This journey toward mastery gives us a goal to work toward that can sustain us when our jobs dissatisfy us.

This is why the image of PhRMA is so bad!!

Pharmaceutical companies spend significant time and money developing, "The first and only approved FDA treatment for inadequate and not enough lashes," and come up with new diseases like "hypotrichosis."

I predict that there will soon be a series of studies presented at medical meetings showing the burden of Hypotrichosis on society and the cost effectiveness of Latisse compared to fake eye lashes.

“Procrastination: A hardening of the oughteries.”

I hate hearing students say, "I don't do my assignments until the last minute because I work better under pressure." One reason this is a sore point with me is that I have to grade some of the crap they submit. Another reason I hate to hear it is because I know that procrastination will hurt them in the future.

Procrastination might be one of the most important things that influences the success of anyone including pharmacists. That's the message coming from Piers Steel, author of the Procrastination Equation. Steel says that people who procrastinate are more likely to be poor, put off necessary health care, have damaged relationships, and many other bad things.

I doubt that our students are any worse than earlier generations at procrastinating. The difference today is that there are too many distractions that permit procrastination -- the Internet, cell phones, and 24-hour media.

Success in pharmacy requires individuals to learn to control their tendency toward procrastination. One strategy I have used which made a big difference in my life was removing all games including solitaire and hearts from my computer.

Now I know have plenty of time to find other excuses to procrastinate.