Greg L. Alston

Author, educator, pharmacist and entrepreneur, Dr. Greg Alston educates frustrated, overworked pharmacists to select and implement the best value strategy possible so they can be paid what they are worth and build a secure future for their families. Connect with him at GregLAlston.com or Twitter.

Contact Greg L. Alston:

Articles by Greg L. Alston

• People join good companies but quit bad managers

  Tuesday, May 26, 2015

  I'm constantly amazed by how people who are charged with managing people try to make life much more complex and difficult than it needs to be. When people join a new company, they are usually excited by the new opportunities and believe in the vision of the organization. They choose the job based on the best fit with their world view. This assumes of course that they have their choice of jobs. If they need a job to eat, the dynamic is quite different.

• Are pharmacists being innovated out of existence?

  Friday, May 15, 2015

  ​The CAPE 2013 Educational Outcomes for pharmacy education created a buzz throughout the academic pharmacy industry. As a result, we must decide how to develop the nonclinical soft skills that have been incorporated into the accreditation guidelines. One of these important new skills is the ability to become an innovator (Guideline 4.3).

• History proves community pharmacy is far from extinction

  Monday, March 16, 2015

  ​I read with great interest a Drug Topics blog post by Truman Lastinger, RPh, titled "Is community pharmacy a dying profession?" While his article laments the loss of control of our profession to third-party actors, the storm of responses is even more telling.

• Why do pharmacists need to learn leadership skills?

  Thursday, November 06, 2014

  A fairly frequent comment I get from student pharmacists goes something like this, "I don't really want to be a boss, why do I need to know leadership and management skills?" Well, aside from the fact that every employer on the planet is looking for people who can lead their business successfully, there is not much reason to hone your management skills.

• What’s the difference between a short-order cook and a pharmacist?

  Friday, October 03, 2014

  ​OK, that may seem like a weird comparison, but let me explain why I think it is important. I'll use the community pharmacist as the example because most people in our profession would agree that community practice probably has the highest burnout rate for pharmacists.

• Do you have to own a pharmacy business to be successful?

  Friday, September 19, 2014

  One of the most common questions I receive is, "Can I use professional business skills to improve my career as an employee, or do I have to own my own business to be successful?" That is a particularly awesome question, so let me dig right into it.

• How to energize your pharmacy career

  Friday, September 05, 2014

  When you're trying to learn something new, as you will be during your pharmacy career, the only way it will make sense to you is if you have a way to connect to the information. If you can't figure out how the information is relevant to you, it's going to be very difficult for you to learn. Greg L. Alston looks at how he has learned over the years, not just as a pharmacist, but also as an educator and speaker.

• Will you still have a job in pharmacy in 5 years?

  Friday, August 29, 2014

  ​My personal mission is to help the next generation of pharmacists understand that the world has changed and teach them the skills to thrive in this new world order. The reality is this: The employment paradigm in this country has changed dramatically in one generation. And you need to understand the impact of this change.

• Is clinical pharmacy really the future of our profession?

  Friday, July 11, 2014

  In the fall of 1974, I entered pharmacy school energized by a new vision of pharmacy practice called clinical pharmacy. Now that 40 years have elapsed, let's take a look at how this vision has manifested within the profession and the education of our student pharmacists.

• 3 secrets to successful leadership

  Wednesday, June 25, 2014

  Good leadership is a curious thing. Lots of brilliant minds have tried to describe it, and lots of feeble minds have misunderstood it. Does personality define the leader, or is it something else? And how does someone travel from being inexperienced to becoming a good leader?

• Why they don’t quit: 3 drivers of employee retention

  Wednesday, June 18, 2014

  Having been in management since 1978, I have attended hundreds of meetings dealing with employee retention issues. The debate has raged for years about what the biggest drivers of satisfied employees are. Most people default to pay as being important, which it obviously is, but it does not seem to be the most important factor.

• 3 ways to turn a small business in to a big business

  Thursday, June 12, 2014

  In my never-ending quest to give simple answers to incredibly complex questions, I have attempted to give a quick explanation of: What makes a business successful and worthy of growing in to a big business? There are really only three things that matter.

• The only 3 things you need to know to be a good pharmacist

  Monday, June 02, 2014

  For the past seven years, I have worked as an associate professor at the Wingate University School of Pharmacy in North Carolina. After working in the retail drug industry since 1977, I had this strange notion that I might be able to help the students balance the heavily acute-care clinical education with the more streetwise practical elements of community pharmacy.

• The only primary care provider who isn’t officially a provider

  Friday, May 16, 2014

  What if the federal government told you that pharmacists were not healthcare providers even though they have been providing healthcare since the birth of our nation? Curiously enough, Section 1861 of the Social Security Act fails to recognize pharmacists as providers.

• The day that hospital-based pharmacy died

  Thursday, May 01, 2014

  Somewhere between 1980 and now, the practice of hospital pharmacy was severely crippled and mortally wounded. Clearly hospitals still employ pharmacists, and pharmacists in hospitals do good work. But the pharmacy department as a thriving business unit was delivered a fatal blow when the reimbursement for pharmacy services was converted to the diagnosis-related group (DRG) method of payment.

• 10 negative employee behaviors that undermine success

  Thursday, May 01, 2014

  ​As managers, we expect the best behavior from each member of our team all the time. But in the real world of business, how do you know when someone is damaging the success of your enterprise? How do you know when to cut someone some slack or terminate their employment?

• The 3 types of prescription errors

  Friday, April 18, 2014

  There is not now, nor will there ever be, an error-free human system or process. As a pharmacist with 35 years of management experience, I have dealt with employee prescription errors for a long time in the real world of community practice. And here is how I have chosen to frame them.

• Does your business suffer from PMS?

  Wednesday, April 16, 2014

  ​No, I am not talking about the condition that women encounter once a month. What I am talking about is the devastatingly destructive force created by a series of bad assumptions known as the parallactic myth syndrome (PMS).

• 3 surefire ways to kill your pharmacy business

  Monday, April 07, 2014

  As I watch the current practices of modern drugstore operators, I am truly amazed that they continue to make the same stupid mistakes that kill sales, aggravate their employees and undermine the professionalism of the pharmacy degree.