Preparing for Unexpected Pharmacy Staffing Shortages
Why would a pharmacy owner or health care facility consider using a temporary pharmacy staffing agency? In 2019 Indispensable Health put together a list of the Top 10 Reasons why temporary pharmacy staffing is needed.
As with any business, there will be times when your pharmacy is short-staffed, no matter how well you plan. People get sick, they need to take FMLA, they resign unexpectedly. In these days of having to do more and more with less and less, it can be difficult to find an experienced pharmacist or pharmacy technician to help out with little advance notice.
One option to consider is to work with a temporary pharmacy staffing agency.
As you contact a staffing agency, think about the tasks you want the temporary pharmacy professional to do. For example with pharmacy technicians, pharmacies use staffing pharmacy technicians for the things that take the least training time. As an example, Indispensable Health has sent experienced inpatient hospital pharmacy technicians to work in the IV room all day, which freed the hospital’s regular pharmacy technicians to work on things that only people who have been working in that particular hospital for a while would know. Pharmacies also use skilled pharmacy technicians from pharmacy staffing agencies like ours for checking in shipments and stocking medications, which again freed up their pharmacy technicians for more the more nuanced tasks.
Other examples of situations where Indispensable Health’s Pharmacy Staffing was needed were for parental leaves and general staff turnover. Recently, one large health system was short-staffed in their pharmacies at a few of their locations due to staff turnover. We were able to have our seasoned pharmacy professionals fill in with little notice to seamlessly cover those pharmacies until they were able to hire their own people.
The perfect time to establish a relationship with an agency is when you are fully staffed. You can then take your time, find an agency that fits your needs, one that provides pharmacy professionals with the skill sets suited to your pharmacy. You will have time to properly set up a contract with the agency, perhaps even have some of their people in for training. Then, when your pharmacy is in a tough spot, they have pharmacy professionals ready to jump in and help out.
Of course, things aren’t always perfect, and it’s not always going to be the case where you can establish a relationship with the agency before you need their help. When you have the need, reach out, be honest about your situation, let the agency know what you need and when, and work with them to make it happen.