Supported by Baxter Healthcare Corporation

The Leadership Resource Center is administered by the ASHP Foundation/ASHP Center for Health-System Pharmacy Leadership, and is supported by a donation from Baxter Healthcare Corporation. This center is our response to practitioners' feedback about needing opportunities at every stage of their careers to develop leadership skills.

Leadership starts with the individual, and some aspects of leadership can and should be implemented by every person, regardless of his or her position. Developing this leadership expertise is necessary for success throughout one's career. Health-system pharmacists need educational resources that will enable them to develop a blueprint for becoming leaders.

There are several components to the Leadership Resource Center. These are:

1. Leadership Self-Assessment
The Leadership Self-Assessment is a way for individual health-system pharmacists to evaluate their personal leadership capabilities, strengths and opportunities for building and strengthening their leadership skills, traits and behaviors based on core leadership competencies. The assessment includes a detailed survey that addresses basic concepts of leadership, including leadership style; differentiating management and leadership; leadership effectiveness; focus on results, urgency and paradigm changes; integrity, authenticity and ethics; leadership emotional quotient; and work-life balance. The assessment provides pharmacists with a starting point for their personal and professional leadership development plans.

2. Core Leadership Self-Development Primer
Certain core principles, which are often absent from the typical education and training of health-system pharmacists, are essential knowledge to achieve leadership momentum and initiatives. The Primer addresses critical principles that transcend individual leadership competencies, forming a conceptual framework for learning and application of leadership principles in contemporary health care environments. Key concepts include systems thinking, alignment, visioning and purposing, strategic leadership, the human side of change and leadership, nimbleness and organizational savvy, negotiation skills, trust and relationship building, and difficult people.

3. Leadership Toolkit
The Leadership Toolkit provides comprehensive, skills-based resources for pharmacy leaders to employ in building leadership influence within the larger organization, prioritizing key leadership opportunities and executing persuasive change initiatives. 


4. Focused Learning Module: Leading for Influence and Advocacy
This module addresses a variety of techniques for advocating for a standards-based approach to medication-use systems and for influencing clinical practice leaders and healthcare executives to engage in the design, implementation, measurement and monitoring of performance related to safe and effective medication use on an organization-wide basis.

Note: You may also watch the popular webinar based on this module's content, which was offered in fall 2010 and taught by James A. Jorgenson, R.Ph., M.S., FASHP, Vice President and Chief Pharmacy Officer for Clarian Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana.


5. Focused Learning Module: Clinical Microsystems: Transformational Framework for Lean Thinking
In the current health care market, one thing is clear: health care organizations will be asked to do more with less. U.S. hospitals are headed for a transformative reawakening, facing sweeping regulatory and reimbursement changes, while at the same time anticipating a dramatic spike in demand for care. A “bandaid and duct tape” approach is not going to work for this needed change. Assessment, diagnosis and treatment of the underlying causes of organizational waste, misalignment and dysfunction demand that interdependent professionals working collaboratively to deliver care to patients and families develop a deeper understanding of care processes – the work we do for patients – to find opportunities to change and ultimately transform the care we provide every day. The clinical microsystems approach provides a framework for understanding the philosophy of lean thinking along with the presentation of a scientific method for testing and implementing change using lean principles.

Note: You may also watch the popular webinar based on this module's content, which was offered in fall 2011 and taught by Kyle Hultgren, Pharm.D., Managing Director of the Center for Medication Safety Advancement at Purdue University's College of Pharmacy.



A Message to Visitors

This resource will continue to evolve. The expanding and enriched core modules will be regularly updated with timely emerging information. New modules will be added to expand the scope and depth of topics addressed to better support you and your team. How you use the Leadership Resource Center and how frequently you access it to maintain familiarity with the content will be a key to its value. This resource has been designed to help you “connect the dots” to strengthen your leadership presence in your organization and to see the opportunity for new perspectives, approaches and insights.

Ultimately, we envision this as a just-in-time resource available to you and your team as you face new challenges requiring unique leadership perspectives. Overall, the Leadership Resource Center is designed and will grow to become a competency-based leadership development roadmap for use by individuals, teams and organizations with the potential to strengthen and drive leadership skills within health-system pharmacy and with profound impact on our practice, our patients and our organizations

The problems we face in our organizations today will not be resolved with yesterday’s leadership skills and resources. We need to think and act differently to face the challenges aggressively and with innovative approaches. The Center for Health-System Pharmacy Leadership stands with you to lead the way. 

We welcome your input to help us improve the functionality of this resource and to identify useful ways to expand the content. Please read about the Leadership Resource Center's author/editor, Sharon Murphy Enright, and consider offering feedback about your use of this resource by e-mailing us at foundation@ashp.org.