Vanessa Lontos - Empowering Pharmacy Leadership and Holistic Health Conversations

Vanessa Lontos is a community pharmacist, previous pharmacy owner and inspiring pharmacy leader, speaker, and coach.  Vanessa provides coaching and development to pharmacists and pharmacy teams across Australia, focusing on patient engagement, team culture, leadership, and change management to enhance their ability, and confidence, to deliver comprehensive health solutions and expanded pharmacy care. 

Prior to launching her consulting business, Vanessa led the Learning and Development team at Sigma Healthcare.  Vanessa is also currently a Learning Consultant with THINKA supporting leaders and teams to develop skills and capabilities in Thinka’s ‘human skills’ curriculum. 

In 2010 Vanessa was a finalist for the City of Port Phillip Citizen of the Year award and won the 2019 ARCHI Award at Sigma Healthcare.  Vanessa lives with her daughter in Melbourne.

You can find Vanessa Lontos on LinkedIn.

Do you have questions about your pharmacy career? Then contact us or meet our team.

Transcript

0:03

Your Pharmacy Career podcast proudly brought to you by Raven's Recruitment Australia's Pharmacy recruitment agency

0:10

spotlights the Myriad of career paths available to pharmacists your host Kristi Lee Patterson and her esteemed

0:16

guests will be sharing invaluable career advice that you can Implement at any stage of your career

0:26

Journey welcome to another episode of your Pharmacy career podcast I'm your

0:31

host Kristi Lee and today I'm joined by the amazing Vanessa Lontos a pharmacist

0:36

and professional leadership coach and speaker as well as a previous Pharmacy owner and a mom welcome Vanessa hi

0:44

Kristi Lee thank you thanks for having me thank you for joining us so uh for

0:50

those that are listening I have the pleasure of meeting Vanessa a few years ago at the women's Pharmacy retreat in

0:56

Victoria and she spoke about leadership ship and team culture and I thought that

1:02

your approach was very practical and I think that stemmed from your experiences as a pharmacist and Pharmacy owner as

1:10

well as the leadership roles you held at Sigma Healthcare so Vanessa I was wondering if you could yeah share your

1:17

transition from working as a community pharmacist and then stepping into that leadership role at Sigma

1:26

healthare uh I think when I reflect on my career carea uh my leadership

1:31

transition probably happened more as a winding road than a straight line uh and it probably wasn't really a goal I had

1:39

in my in my mind initially and also to took me a little bit of time to settle into it but I Pro I spent the first half

1:47

of my career managing pharmacies uh for the my chemist and amcel group and was

1:53

really kind of fortunate to have some great Pharmacists and owners and different team members that I think

2:00

really noticed and observed their leadership skills uh and and had some really great role models on the way

2:05

through in that initial in those initial sort of um years of my career uh but

2:12

when I I sort of had throughout that time of managing pharmacies really wanted to take a break from the retail

2:19

side of things and became an accredited pharmacist and was conducting home medicine reviews kind of largely

2:26

full-time but it was actually a conversation I had with a patient that really changed things for me and um

2:33

essentially what happened I'll just tell you the quick story because it's it's quite a good one I think um yeah so I

2:39

went and did a a HMR home medicine review for a lady and we sat down and

2:44

she had all her medicines out I asked her all the questions that I normally would ask and I thought I had all the

2:50

information that I needed to write up a great report for the doctor but before I left she said to me um Vanessa can I

2:58

just ask you one more question and I said of course you can and she said that

3:04

all that information is really helpful but when am I actually going to start to feel

3:12

better and that really kind of struck me for two reasons um the first one being

3:17

we've come such a long way with medicine and medicines but I think receiving Health Care is very much a human

3:25

experience um a very individual experience and also I kind of was

3:31

reflecting upon it when I left and thought how can I have better conversations in the small time that we

3:37

have in the Community Pharmacy setting so to be honest it set me off on a bit

3:42

of a so this kind of quest inspired me to expand my skills in health and

3:48

wellness coaching life coaching leadership coaching and even motivational interviewing and public

3:54

speaking and I was really intentional about that expansion in my profession

4:00

development because I really wanted to bring them back into my role as a pharmacist because ultimately these

4:06

types of modalities help us learn different ways of communicating and having communication Frameworks that

4:12

help build relationships and facilitate change and behavior as well uh and then

4:19

I moved into Pharmacy ownership i i in um had a little Pharmacy for just under

4:25

three years we were a small team we did about 120 scripts a day day and we had a

4:30

really large pharmacotherapy program of over a 100 patients and what I actually

4:35

noticed was I was using these new coaching and communication skills in my

4:41

role as an owner as a leader and as a pharmacist and noticed that it was

4:46

really helping me build trust and Rapport and get more clarity around patient goals and and how I could

4:53

support them to make small changes to to achieve Better Health outcomes and they

4:58

were really crucial in helping me be a more confident leader and a more fulfilling fulfilled pharmacist that was

5:04

making a difference um but to be honest I got quite burnt out uh juggling

5:09

ownership and being a new mom and decided to sell the pharmacy when Olivia

5:15

was one uh to step into my passion for supporting pharmacists to to develop

5:21

their their skills in patient engagement but also in leadership and so I developed uh a coaching program for

5:29

pharmacists uh under something that I called The Care Project which was a Care Counseling

5:34

program uh and I worked one-on-one going from Pharmacy to Pharmacy teaching them

5:39

how to expand their the counseling skills and had this great opportunity to Pilot the program with Sigma uh the

5:46

amcal and guardian Brands specifically which is how I came to join Sigma and I

5:51

started off there as a pharmacist coach uh in the as a and as a Learning and Development specialist in the dispensary

5:58

operations team and specifically working with David Preston and we would we then uh together

6:04

designed and developed and delivered the leap uh dispensary Excellence program which so I sort of started off in that

6:12

coach uh L &d specialist role and then grew in the organization over the next

6:18

five years into the leadership positions of Learning and Development manager and then the group manager for training and

6:26

communication yeah thanks for sharing that uh Vanessa I think when you were talking about yeah owning a pharmacy and

6:33

then getting burned out when you had Olivia uh I'm sure there's many people out there that can relate I'd love to

6:41

understand a little bit more about what motivated those initiatives at Sigma

6:46

especially because Learning and Development of Pharmacy staff is so important um and but really a pharmacy

6:56

is a is a retail environment and it's front and it can make it quite difficult

7:01

for people to participate in the right type of learning and so yeah I'd love to

7:07

understand yeah how you took those learnings uh and initially the the um I

7:14

guess the vision for leap was to provide far dispensary teams particularly uh

7:21

with a framework a really step by step framework for them to achieve three main

7:27

objectives I guess you could summarize it too um it was really around dispensary workflow efficiencies so that

7:34

pharmacists could have more time to engage patients uh and develop the counseling skills that they needed to

7:41

influence outcomes and expand Professional Services week program so we

7:46

used a combination of in-person workshops as well as online workshops and webinars online modules one-on-one

7:54

coaching sessions both in the pharmacy and um virtually uh and

7:59

this sort of integrated uh approach was really key to

8:05

one to the successes and I think ongoing at Sigma we were able to really focus on

8:11

how do we make the online training platform that One-Stop shop that centralized place for pharmacy team

8:17

members and pharmacists to come back to so that they've got access to what they

8:22

need and ultimately importantly in the flow of work uh that they can um

8:28

allocate short periods of time to completing the learning and then and a

8:34

lot of the learnings that we included not just in the LEAP program but also through different learning modules and

8:40

courses on the online training platform was really practical and tools- based uh so that it was easy for

8:48

different team members to not only access but apply the learning and then have that personal um approach to their

8:56

learning but it also evaluate their learning and and measure the impact that that they were that they were you

9:03

mentioned earlier in the conversation around having effective

9:08

conversations with the patient or having that patient centered approach to to conversations and I guess that kind of

9:16

leads into the holistic health conversations that you have embedded

9:22

within your your coaching program so I'd love to yeah understand if you could

9:28

give us a bit of an overview of that program and it's its achievements yes

9:34

definitely so I think it helps initially to sort of understand more from a definition perspective what we mean when

9:40

we talk about patient engagement and really it's a way of having in my view a way of having a

9:45

conversation that in enables the patient to be more involved in their own health

9:50

care their own health care decisions and the actions that they need to take to improve their health uh so when we

9:57

engage patients holistically it's about developing our skills and our confidence to have these counseling conversations

10:04

where we really focus on that safe use of medicines the preventative and the

10:09

management of the and treatment of chronic diseases and also empowering them in self-management and the

10:14

lifestyle changes that they might need to make well and what was interesting about Care Counseling when I first

10:20

created it was um i' you know walk go around to the different pharmacies and

10:25

support them to expand their counseling skills with different questions but when I'd um leave them for a few weeks they'd

10:33

end up going back to their all their old habits and fall back out of the change uh and so that was one of the benefits

10:40

of includ of the LEAP program actually was that having those other elements to

10:46

the program where we were optimizing workflow efficiencies to enable pharmacists to be more available enabled

10:53

the pharmacist to be more you know productive when they were having conversations with patients since then

11:00

though uh and over the course of time and I've continued to work and and understand more about how we can keep

11:07

engaging patients holistically and and the importance of that and I think it

11:13

really like it really does come down to to to the four key things it's about having the team around you uh and

11:20

engaged in in in the making the patient Health everyone's

11:26

responsibility uh and really being engaged and productive so that you you can each have an impact and be available

11:32

to the C to the customers and patients when they're there it's also about having what I call headspace so when you

11:39

are with someone being feel having presence and that's why it's so important to have team members that are

11:45

um you know empowered and enabled in their own rights to have the roles and responsibilities that they have to

11:51

support all of the other operations and services and and activities that we have

11:56

in the pharmacy setting and then it comes down to when you're in that individual conversation do you have that

12:02

clinical confidence to to expand the conversation and and ask some different

12:08

questions about the safe use of the medicines or the way they're managing a particular condition and also do you

12:15

have the you know the conversational confidence have you got the right questioning techniques are you curious

12:21

enough about their individual circumstances so that you can have more outcome based conversations I think

12:28

that's really important important that ensuring that these conversations that you're having actually translate to

12:35

better health outcomes and I don't think it's it's something that maybe as pharmacists we don't actually think

12:42

about enough we kind of getting to that habit of how we've been trained and

12:47

asking the right questions and getting the information to the patient as quickly as possible really and not

12:53

actually thinking about that individual person so I totally agree with that and I think that it's a really important

13:00

point to sort of highlight and you know over time I've got lots of evidence and

13:05

case study data I guess you could say around the measurable and tangible

13:11

impact that was occurring through and does occur through these conversations and it it's actually less about time

13:17

because you can be really effective with a in a counseling conversation within 45

13:22

seconds if you've got if you've asked one or two helpful questions uh that

13:28

really kind of get to the heart of the person's circumstances a lot quicker yeah yeah I think that's a really really

13:35

good tip and so I'm thinking oh I think everyone should do this coaching program it would be very very valuable I

13:42

think with the the coaching it's probably a bit of um I don't want to say

13:48

a buzzword but just within General Life um there's people that are life coaches

13:54

leadership coaches um Health coaching but what does that actually mean in in

14:00

the pharmacy context so what's your approach to encompassing

14:05

all of these things to yeah get better health outcomes in the pharmacy setting

14:11

yeah uh yeah you're right when I first started coaching I was like I feel a bit embarrassed this is all and it wasn't as

14:17

mainstream to be honest like this is back you know 2009 10 sort of thing uh

14:22

and I sort of felt a little bit um unsure about how that could work but ultimately I think for me at the heart

14:28

of coaching is where are you now where do you want to be and how can we bring that Gap closer together and a lot of

14:35

coaches kind of explain coaching that way in the pharmacy context I think

14:42

there's two perspectives that can really help to to answer this question the

14:47

first one being that I just I I I think we have to really understand and

14:53

acknowledge that there's a there's a human side of healthcare and some

14:59

sometimes there's a quite a slow translation of evidence of Effectiveness into the routine practice of things you

15:05

know the knowing and the doing gaps that we can have and so what we know holistically is that all parts of our

15:11

life can impact the way we're able to manage our health and so essentially understanding that we it's

15:18

important that we build skills where we can have conversations about Behavior because our behaviors are ultimately

15:24

what drives out the outcomes that we're achieving which is why the coaching um skills be so helpful but equally I think

15:32

if we zoom out a little bit as well and just think about even in the for example

15:38

in the National medicines policy and the World Health Organization is doing a lot

15:43

of amazing work at the moment in terms of the global patient safety Challenge

15:49

and reducing medication related harm uh there's a there's a really important

15:55

responsibility and and opportunity we have in pharmacy to to sort of have that clinical

16:01

responsibility and share that information around the safe use of medicines but again that and that

16:06

holistic responsibility to explore individual needs and C circumstances and ultimately it's it's

16:14

kind of my hope that through learning and and grounding our skills in

16:19

different and new ways of having conversations then we we tend to have bit a bit more of a Grassroots impact uh

16:27

one conversation at a time one patient at a time where we're able to you know

16:32

improve things like their understanding their medication adherence getting Clarity on what their

16:38

goals are and where they can be where we can be more collaborative with other Health Care Professionals to support

16:44

them in their care I know supporting shared decision making particularly is a really important Focus um and a growing

16:53

uh area of understanding around how do we actually support and Empower patients to understand and make decisions for

17:00

their health to build their health literacy and also things like improving cultural competence and sensitivity when

17:07

we can communicate more effectively we actually are much better at respectfully uh engaging people's cultural

17:13

backgrounds and appreciating their beliefs uh and and ultimately giving them the education and the empowerment

17:21

that is at the heart of really fostering safe use of medicines treatment and

17:27

prevention of diseases and then an ongoing impact at the point of care you mentioned the human aspect of

17:35

it and that is just so important in every interaction I think in a pharmacy

17:40

not just with the patient but also with the pharmacy teams as well yes and I

17:47

think sometimes yeah when you're in the in the Daily Grind and it's busy you

17:54

just get into that kind of operational aspect of okay you you need to stand

17:59

here you do this job and it can almost be a little bit robotic and yeah bringing in that human

18:07

aspect to to learning and building that culture of of learning in in the

18:13

pharmacy I think is really important and think most pharmacists probably know

18:18

this or most owners know this but it's how do they actually do it is quite tricky and how do they Implement that

18:26

that culture of learning and change management so what are some of the

18:32

strategies you've you've found um that actually work it's it's definitely difficult um

18:39

yeah to bring everyone on board it is it is one of the most interesting uh

18:46

insights I had early on in my role as L &d manager was actually from a report I

18:52

read by Deo uh they talked about the modern day learner and I I think what

18:59

they said in this report was that 1% of a typical work week is all that full-time employees have to focus on

19:06

training and development so if we take 1% and we think about our Pharmacy teams

19:11

that's about 20 minutes for full-timers which is and so much less for you know if you're not

19:18

working in a full-time capacity and so I think understanding that it's not just a

19:24

pharmacy challenge with like I think across workplaces it's the significant ific

19:30

Challenge and also coupling that with how are we as humans and the way that

19:36

life outside of the workplace the way we consume information our attention information overload even just the way

19:44

that we're on social media has affected our attention and ability to retain information and stay

19:50

focused and so the first strategy that I think's the mo one of the most important

19:56

is how do you take that little bit of time and make it meaningful how do you take 20 minutes or 10 minutes or five

20:02

minutes and chunk it down as much as you can so that when you are engaging in

20:07

Opportunities For Learning you you use that time in an effective way and

20:14

equally what does that mean it's actually largely around how do you support your team to have an always on

20:22

learning um mindset so there's opportunities for learning both formally

20:27

and informally and I think we've got a bit of a traditional mindset we can have

20:33

sometimes and I can fall back into this myself where unless we're all sitting in the tear room and we've got some food

20:39

and we've got people talking about a particular topic that we're not learning and that we're not training and so the

20:46

opportunity to learn from each other five minute mentors peer-to-peer learning listening to a conversation

20:53

that somebody else might be having and picking things up as you go uh I think was one of the most

20:59

uh important strategies that we implemented and that was really one of

21:05

the things that we were successful with with the lift program specifically but ongoing and in my work now as a

21:10

consultant in this space all the time is really to support that how do we make

21:16

learning really quick easy to digest how do you get lots of different team members involved to learn and share from

21:23

each other and then how do you track progress and make that progress visible in a way that's

21:30

where we recognize and reward our team and equally we celebrate success because

21:35

again reconnecting to that purpose that the health outcomes and the experience is everyone's responsibility kind of

21:42

keeps that learning culture alive and connected to a bigger ultimate purpose of the team

21:49

overall I definitely think those strategies were are very helpful and when you mentioned about that 1% and 1%

21:57

is 20 minutes for fulltime I almost feel like in reality

22:02

we're not even giving them 20 minutes a week sometimes yes which is yeah a bit

22:08

embarrassing but that's just the the way it is but thinking about it differently

22:14

and thinking okay learning doesn't have to be sitting in a t- room like you said

22:20

and um shadowing and asking questions and getting them to listen to those

22:26

conversations is is really effective and I remember when I was in my very first

22:32

Pharmacy working I think it was like 17 or 18 and my boss used to make me stand

22:39

and listen to every conversation that he had and so whenever I referred to him

22:44

it's like no you stand here and and listen and I'm like oh but there's people that need to be served he's like no you need to

22:50

learn so yeah I think it's such a simple strategy but sometimes we can kind of

22:57

think oh it's too busy just go serve but taking that time to oh no this person's learning will be with you in a minute

23:03

that type of thing yeah it makes a really big difference and it sticks more for the Learner in that moment because

23:10

they're kind of in an experiential what we call an experiential setting uh and which is

23:16

also very powerful so yeah I completely agree and I have had lots of examples of that myself as well just in the early

23:22

stages when pharmacists would do that was so helpful yeah absolutely and I

23:28

guess I kind of leads into like change management and we hear again that that word or um quite a

23:35

bit in farmacy and what does it actually mean and um there's so many different Frameworks and how to apply it but yeah

23:44

in in your experience in far in Pharmacy especially with the amount of changes

23:51

that have been happening in Pharmacy um maybe you could use examples of that

23:57

escript Readiness or qcp enhancements and yeah how you can yeah actually make

24:03

change management effective in Pharmacy yes it's it's a really

24:08

interesting thing and I I I think as a as a coach I think what's happened for

24:14

me is I've probably got some hard wiring around the way I think about change

24:20

because it's almost like it's this backbone that exists or this this phen

24:26

this thing that exists within businesses that's kind of always there and so

24:32

whenever I'm thinking about effective change management in Pharmacy I tend to

24:37

come back to the same sort of fundamental principles that have helped me with program implementation but also

24:44

going through my own change and equally supporting patients through different changes and working with teams when

24:50

they're trying to make change and I think there's a couple of things that a couple of perspectives that help or just

24:57

insights that can help with this the first one is being aware of what the stages of change actually are and and

25:05

what what that means uh and so any time when we're in a CH an experience of

25:11

change we're going to be going through individually this change process and then collectively the change process and

25:19

so there's you know what when I talk about the change process I mean indiv as individuals you're going to be navigating that precontemplation

25:26

contemplation action imple mentation those sorts of things and then alongside

25:32

that there's some really great Frameworks that are helpful to Anchor

25:39

back to when we're moving through change but I think ultimately it comes down to some trying to simplify these these lots

25:47

of different Frameworks that we can use into some elements that I find really helpful the first one being um planning

25:55

and actually giving yourself some some space and time to plan far in Pharmacy one of the things I've leared

26:01

particularly when I'm coaching leadership and culture is it's one thing one behavior that many teams just don't

26:09

give themselves time for planning and organization uh communication is a

26:14

really important part of change so and lots of it one example I really like to

26:19

share is you know you're communicating effectively if the person that's working at the pharmacy the Le the least knows

26:26

what's going on and so you can't really communicate too much and you need to be using multiple

26:33

different channels of you know platforms of communication whatsapps Facebook emails it's it's important to enable

26:40

that um the messaging and there's also this important part of empowering your

26:46

team members to make decisions and problems solve navigating ambiguity is a skill in and of itself and that's that's

26:54

where you have this tolerance of uncertainty and so I think having conversations and really focusing as a

27:01

team on creating that psychological safety which we're talking more and more about psychosocial

27:07

safety is an a part of change that helps teams because it it's that space of

27:15

being able to together want to work towards Excellence but equally it's safe to make a mistake and so another really

27:22

key part of moving through change is feeling safe to make mistakes to adapt to have to take feedback on and try

27:30

something new and ultimately give people time to be in

27:35

some type of new normal to allow that stabilization so that they feel like they've actually moved through a process

27:42

and the the the movement through the change landed somewhere because often

27:48

what we do iny we what I call we stack ourselves so we've got this massive

27:53

to-do list and we need to do all these things and change this and change this and change and change that and Y I get

28:00

it I understand like the in the industry that we're in there's a lot of changes that kind of arrive on our

28:07

door steps very quickly but I think we've got an opportunity to just work with the team and think about

28:15

it you know in the example of e groups for example one of the strategies that we used and and I've seen pharmacist do

28:23

really well is really consider the human factor first which is this is going to

28:28

be hard and it's going to be significant and we're going to move through waves of

28:34

motivation and willpower and quit points and and so being really proactive about

28:41

okay let's assemble a team let's work together let's get a mix of skills and

28:46

conversations going regularly let's share the workload and the responsibilities across what needs to be

28:53

done and let's keep working together and and and

28:58

and you know moving through the uncertainty and all of the moving pieces in a way that

29:05

feels more manageable and less overwhelming that would be nice to have

29:12

it less overwhelming because it can definitely feel very overwhelming at the time yeah yeah I hope everyone's writing

29:19

that tip down I guess now I wanted to chat to you about yeah maybe what tips

29:25

you can offer to pharmacists that are looking to invest in their personal

29:31

development and enhance their their leadership capabilities because there

29:37

are some pharmacists out there that are maybe working um for a pharmacy

29:43

that might be limited in the types of support that they can provide and so

29:50

yeah what can they do themselves in in this space yeah I think my biggest tip with

29:57

personal development is to find something that works for you

30:03

specifically personal development is such a big area and it's it really

30:09

involves it's a process of find of you know Finding ways that you can learn

30:14

more about yourself and improve in certain areas to sort of reach that full

30:19

capacity but I think it's there's lots of different things you can do even just individually starting to learn and build

30:26

your own self levels of self-awareness you know noticing when you're when you

30:32

might be feeling frustrated noticing when you might be avoiding difficult conversations noticing when you might be

30:39

feeling like you're saying yes to taking on lots of tasks when really you're at capacity and you want to be able to

30:45

learn how to say no self-awareness self-reflection and just noticing your

30:51

own emotions and your own thoughts is a really easy free way of starting to move

30:59

into that area of personal development and then from that point of okay these

31:05

are the skills and areas that I want to get better at what can you set a goal

31:11

you know who can you engage with for new skills uh how can you use a lot of the

31:17

the information that's available online podcasts uh mentors that you might follow on social media all of these

31:24

things are actually easy ways of of elevating and and and moving more into

31:29

personal development that self-awareness is is a very big one and yeah even throughout my career I

31:38

thought I had good self-awareness but then when you actually either sit down or make a

31:44

conscious effort to become more self-aware you can I guess find these

31:49

hidden areas that you or blind spots um and you talked about some of the free

31:54

things that you can do and there's also I think they're called like personality

32:00

type um assessments and things like that and I did one I think it was uh a

32:06

picture Partners Workshop that I went to years ago when they were doing the Hogan

32:11

assessments and there's one where you can do it and it's how you actually respond in times of stress and that was

32:19

the biggest eye opener for me because I the way that I am under stress is a very

32:26

different person to in normal situations and yeah really open my eyes

32:32

to oh okay wow I do this and then I shared that with my team once I got back

32:37

um from that session they're like yeah you do that all the time I was like what nobody even told me what do you mean

32:44

that I do this so yeah and then that was even

32:49

sharing the that selfawareness once you learn what those things are can be

32:54

really valuable with the team especially with your pharmacy assistant because then they feel more comfortable with you

33:01

because you are being more vulnerable as well and so i' say to them oh like if

33:07

you see me starting to act like this can you um we had a a code saying Kristi

33:12

do you need a coffee and it was so if yeah they said that to my okay yep I need to just chill

33:20

out for five seconds CU maybe I'm not being the best leader right now so it's

33:26

such a good example and you're right I think these tools are so helpful to and there's lots of

33:33

different ones you can do it's a really good one to notice what how you are under stress and then the the benefit of

33:40

having open and honest conversations with your team ultimately that's what people want in the workplace they want

33:46

to be able to be themselves and also grow and develop together rather than

33:52

trying to just manage themselves all on their own so I think it it helps us

33:58

P personally and professionally to work better together when we're able to have these insights about ourselves now my

34:05

very last question uh question without notice is what would you say is the

34:13

maybe the biggest piece of advice that you've wish you had when you were younger I think for me it's a couple of

34:20

things the first one is that it's really important and okay to take care of my

34:27

own own health and well-being and really notice when things are overwhelming when

34:34

I'm saying when I'm feeling really stressed and when I'm taking on too much and and to be honest about needing to

34:41

take a break or to slow down or to you know block things out into the calendar

34:46

so that I can take more of have a more balanced and and and have more

34:51

breaks and have a have more rest in the middle of the days so that I can be more

34:57

um energetic and energized and able to give in the areas of my work and life that mean so much to me so really just

35:05

kind of taking understanding the importance of that uh I think is probably the first

35:10

thing and the second thing would would be that you can do anything you want

35:17

like and it you don't have like I think we overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in

35:23

10 and so stay be like be clear on the

35:28

that what I would really love to do and who I'd really love to serve and support and do one thing really well and and do

35:36

another thing really well the following year not try and do everything all at once I think that is great advice and

35:42

they kind of lean into each other so yeah taking those breaks and looking after yourself and yeah not having to do

35:50

everything at once I I need to take that advice myself because I'm love to do things today or yesterday

35:58

well Vanessa thank you so much for joining us today I've really loved the discussion uh today and I am sure our

36:07

listeners have have found some really useful tips in there as well so thank you and I hope we have you on the show

36:13

again soon thanks Kristi Lee I really appreciate it thanks again you've been listening to Your Pharmacy Career

36:20

podcast brought to you by Raven's Recruitment don't miss our next episode where we continue to explore the

36:26

multifaceted world of Pharmacy careers make sure to subscribe and share

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