Learning Community

Build skills by participating in this year’s Learning Community, where sessions build upon learnings in previous sessions.  The Learning Community is comprised of five application-based educational sessions for more than 12 hours of practical, results-driven training.

Leading the Pharmacy Enterprise in Challenging Times Learning Community
Planned in cooperation with the Center for Health-System Pharmacy Leadership

When challenges abound, so do opportunities. While the pharmacy enterprise is increasing recognized as essential to the overall strategic success of hospitals and health systems, pressures are on the rise.  Financial constraints, evolving C-suite expectations, practice standards, and corporate compliance issues demand new skills and frameworks for thought and action. No matter your practice setting, these practical, application-based sessions will help you develop the leadership skill you need to survive and prevail.

Branding and Influence for Critical Change in Challenging Times

ACPE Program #204-000-09-102-L04P (2.0 Contact Hours / Application-based)

How we are perceived and how we influence others – as individuals and as a department -- affects how we execute our vision and achieve results.  This session will explore the critical concepts of personal and departmental branding as strategies for influencing others and how we are perceived in the organization.  

Learning Objectives:

1. Define and apply personal branding techniques and their importance to effective leadership of the pharmacy enterprise.
2. Apply five savvy leadership and branding component elements to sound strategic and tactical leadership approaches.
3. Identify six critical elements of effective storytelling and apply them to personal or departmental leadership brands.
4. Describe six sources of influence and cite examples of how they strengthen leadership of the pharmacy enterprise.

Building Branding and Influence Skills

ACPE Program #204-000-09-107-L04P (3.0 Contact Hours / Application-based)

This highly interactive workshop session will offer facilitated breakout discussions for affinity groups addressing critical skills discussed in the morning session.  Participants will use exercises and cases to make personal choices for practice environment / issues.

Learning Objectives:

1. Develop a personal action plan for building and refining personal or departmental branding skills.
2. Apply newly learned storytelling elements and skills to build core elements of a brand message for personal or departmental branding.
3. Identify potential impact of sources of influence and apply to the development of a preliminary plan for building influence skills in your workforce.

Resolving Wicked Problems with High-Reliability Leadership

ACPE Program #204-000-09-112-L04P (2.0 Contact Hours / Application-based)

Wicked problems can’t be solved, but they can be managed.  Wicked problems are not just difficult, they are different because they can’t be solved with traditional solutions, so our finely honed hindsight has only limited value.  Additional data, better definition of issues, and dissection to smaller sub-issues will not tame them – and may make them worse.  What is needed is a new way of thinking, a new set of skills, and a realization that we will have to behave differently.  

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe decision making in increasingly complex environments, the associated challenges we face in healthcare, and the importance of a strong leadership culture.
2. Describe the characteristics of high reliability organizations.
3. Apply leadership strategies and tactics to understand and position your organization to deal more effectively with wicked messes, particularly related to medication-safety issues.
4. Describe and apply critical thinking and change management skills to the leadership issues facing the contemporary pharmacy enterprise.

Applying Skills to Resolve Wicked Problems

ACPE Program #204-000-09-117-L04P (2.5 Contact Hours / Application-based)

This highly interactive session will offer breakout discussions for affinity groups addressing critical skills discussed in the morning session.  Participants will use cases to address a range of issues resulting from the current financial environment.

Learning Objectives:

1. Develop a personal action plan for recognizing and applying leadership strategies and tactics, and critical thinking skills needed in complex environments.
2. Apply critical thinking and change management skills to case study “wicked messes” resulting from the healthcare financial environment.
3. Evaluate the potential impact of critical practice issues and organizational culture within your organization and apply leadership principles to develop organizational strategies for success.

Bringing It All Together : Solving Problems in Turbulent Times

ACPE Program #204-000-09-122-L04P (2.5 Contact Hours / Application-based)

As a general rule pharmacists are linear thinkers.  Using two innovative technologies, Knowledge Café and Mind Mapping, the final session in the Learning Community will challenge the participants to experience a new way of thinking about the challenges that they have been discussing over the past two days. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Apply the techniques and principles of Knowledge Café and Mind Mapping to strategic and tactical planning for the pharmacy enterprise.
2. Describe and apply new learning that emerges in open dialog, to unleash what we “know” related to skills for leading the pharmacy enterprise.
3. Define issues, strategies, and solutions for success identified through the session and build them into preliminary personal and departmental plans for change.