For the last two weeks, I have been the proud part-owner of a smallish pharmacy in Melbourne's south east. It has been a challenge which I have so far both loathed and enjoyed. While I never imagined it to be merely a barrel of laughs, I am already finding myself hitting barriers which I do not yet know how to deal with.

With a refit coming in the early months of 2004, I am finding myself torn between going all out to show improvement in the pharmacy before the refit, or to ride the bumps between now and January, and prepare everything for a grand opening then.
Seems like the easy and lazy option, and there is no way in the world I would be able to put up with the present layout of the pharmacy.

While the traffic flow along the strip of shops is quite high (parking outside always seems quite difficult), I have found it incredibly frustrating that there seems to be little making its way through the front doors. While I am confident that they will make their way through the doors in time, it has left me absolutely spare, going from a pharmacy that did one hundred and fifty prescriptions per pharmacist per day to scraping fifty prescriptions per day.
While it is tremendous as it means that I can spend more time counselling patients, offering advice and helping with all their health needs, it also leaves me with a hell of a lot of time standing around waiting!!

One of the worst ways to fill in this time has been all the paperwork associated with the new pharmacy. HIC, Blackmores, Chemists Own, Pharmacare.
It seems that it is never ending.

Adding to this is a pharmacy assistant whose set tasks are running at a minimal, due to a lack of workload.
There are obviously limits to how many times she can dust and vacuum, and for the time being I would like to be able keep a more active eye on the ordering and unpacking process.
While I am well aware of the risk of alienating her and her enjoyment of her job (she craves responsibility), when would be the right time to give her set areas to look after?

In the initial stages, I keep being told to ensure that the pharmacy maintains a holding pattern and maintains goodwill with the present consumers before looking to increase, I am finding myself getting incredibly impatient with the lack of growth in what is potentially, a fantastic pharmacy set up.