Coming up with new years resolutions for pharmacists can be fun and help prepare you to achieve your goals for the new year. In 2017 what do you want to accomplish? How do you want to improve upon yourself? This post is meant to help answer these questions.
Authored By: Timothy P. Gauthier, Pharm.D., BCPS-AQ ID
New years resolutions for pharmacists can be oriented toward professional development, personal growth or other areas. By participating in the tradition of developing a resolution or two for 2017, you can make progress towards improving yourself.
The first step in creating your resolutions is to be honest with yourself. For example, if you know that for the last 5 years all of your resolutions have gone out the window by March, then it is probably likely that will occur again in 2017. In turn, maybe select a high-impact item that if only done for a month or two, can still benefit you for the rest of the year. Alternatively, if you are able to maintain for the first six months of the year with a high-impact item, maybe choose a medium-impact item which you may be more likely to keep going for the entire year.
Second, consider how you will hold yourself to your commitment. One strategy to help with this is to tell a few of your colleagues or friends about your resolutions. With their support (and the guilt of knowing you will “let them down” if you fail), perhaps you will have the motivation to follow through.
Third, think about your schedule and resources. If you try to commit to things you do not have the time or resources for, you are destined to fail. Think about the whole year too, not just January. As big events come and go, how may that effect your goals and how can you plan to complete your tasks while keeping up with your resolutions.
With that in mind, here are a few New Years resolutions for pharmacists to consider…
1. Commit to developing a personal mission statement
Do not overlook this! This is an item you can pick and it will help you for years to come. I started one over 5 years ago and it still helps me today.
Personal mission statement activities assist us in orienting ourselves towards what is most important to us in life. In composing one, it is necessary to invest a few hours into a soul-searching type of task, but after that, it really is not too much work.
2. Decide to live a healthier lifestyle
We can always do better for ourselves when it comes to eating, sleeping and exercising. This is the obvious new years resolution that we all pick in one form or another.
These two quick reads may be helpful for picking this as your resolution. If you are not up for something too substantial, maybe you can at least commit to not purchasing meat products from animals brought up on unnecessary antibiotics?
3. Seek to become a board certified pharmacotherapy specialist
Want to stand out amongst your peers or make yourself a more appealing job applicant? Achieving board certification may be just what you need.
Note before starting this path that it can be fairly substantial from the economic perspective, unless your employer will pay or increase your salary should you pass the test.
4. Find or strengthen bonds with a mentor or mentee
No doubt you have had mentors, but how are your relationships with them now? Maybe 2017 is the year to reach out, ask for a lunch and strengthen that connection.
Similarly, maybe you have a mentee that you have not stayed in touch with as well as you anticipated. A simple email may be just the thing to keep your bond going. Perhaps you can still help your mentee yet!
If the whole mentor/mentee thing is foreign to you, then you are missing out! Being a mentor can be incredibly rewarding and finding a mentor for yourself can serve a powerful mechanism for elevating your professional competency.
5. Become professionally engaged
With all of the responsibilities life throws at us it can seem like it is too much to become engaged within the pharmacy profession. Fortunately however, there are a variety of ways to get involved and many of them do not take a substantial amount of time.
You can consider joining up with a city, state or national society. Getting involved at a college of pharmacy may also be a fun yet rewarding new challenge.
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