Review the list of activities/tasks in your pharmacy (you can find details of how to create one in the box above) against the following criteria:

• How essential is it? Is it important to the running of the business (e.g. ordering stock, endorsing prescriptions, conducting NMS follow ups, serving customers, recording near misses)?
• How appropriate is it? Who should perform a task? What skill level is required? Are your team members trained to do the things they do? Is more training needed? When things go wrong, is it systems that are at fault rather than individuals?
• How efficient is it? Are you getting the best out of your team? Are there better ways of doing things? For each task, who in the team is the right person for the job? Can you deal with a piece of paper by picking it up only once? In the dispensary, are all the essential items to hand? Is stock easy to find and prioritised for fast-moving lines?

If procedures and queries happen often, can you improve the way you deal with them? What can staff deal with rather than you? Can you use technology better? How can you improve the dispensing near-miss rate?

• How consistent is it? Quality is reliable, dependable and consistent. Is the task performed consistently each time? Is it done as well as it can be?

Just thinking about the above will give you a clearer view of the systems you need to change and whether more can be delegated across the pharmacy team.