A leadership crisis in pharmacy

A lot has been said about leadership (or lack thereof) in pharmacy. We first wrote about this over 10 years ago, suggesting steps for changing pharmacy practice and the need for strong leadership. Sadly, not much has changed since then, but at least the topic has resurfaced recently. In their insightful paper published in the Journal in September 2018, Shikaze et al. said, “A profession without leaders from within that profession is simply not sustainable.” In their interviews with pharmacists, they found that the participants in their study identified a widespread leadership deficit and a current lack of leadership exemplars. Sadly, participants actually equated leadership with selfishness and self-interest. Bachynsky and Tindall, in the November/December 2018 issue of CPJ, gave an important perspective on the history of leadership in pharmacy, as well as the decline of pharmacists’ professional independence, and outlined the need for “leadership from within.” Why is this important? Leadership is necessary in order to be able to serve our communities with a full scope of pharmacy practice. To not act on this means we ignore the evidence for benefit of pharmacist care on patient outcomes, and we ignore that patients want this kind of care from their pharmacist. Let’s face it, pharmacy has a leadership crisis. So, what specifically is leadership? There are many definitions, but rather than espouse a certain definition, let me list some principles and characteristics of good leadership: