Decision making- most important managerial skill

Dear friends,
With this article I am putting an end for this series of blogs on managerial skills which are important for pharmacy students. But without mentioning about ‘decision making’ the most important managerial skill, my efforts are incomplete. Though I am scrapping on this skill at the last, it possesses the maximum relevance in a good manager’s career.

Decision making is defined as the selection of a course of action from among alternatives;it is at the core of planning. It can also be explained as the study of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision maker. Making a decision implies that there are alternative choices to be considered, and in such a case we want not only to identify as many of these alternatives as possible but to choose the one that best fits with our goals, desires, lifestyle, values, and so on. Managers sometimes see decision making as their central job they must constantly choose what is to be done, who is to do it, and when, where, and occasionally even how it will be done. It is a primary step in the process of planning which is crucial for the existence of an organization.

In the health care field, the steps of making a decision may be remembered with the mnemonic BRAND, which includes

• Benefits of the action
• Risks in the action
• Alternatives to the prospective action
• Nothing: that is, doing nothing at all
• Decision

Careful decision making is important in all the aspects related to health care sector. Logical decision making is an important part of all science-based professions, where specialists apply their knowledge in a given area to make informed decisions. For example, medical decision making often involves making a diagnosis and selecting an appropriate treatment. Pharmacy students seeking a career in drug development to pharmaceutical marketing and formulation to pharmacy practice have to play the role of a good decision maker to perform well in all these areas. What is the need of the customer, what drug to be invented, how to synthesize, how to conduct the clinical studies? –such numerous questions are to be answered by a pharmacist working in research and development. A clinical pharmacist or community has to handle numerous alternatives from which the exact problem of the patient to be derived and make it as a decision.
Pharmacy students should develop all the managerial skills including decision making in order to achieve ultimate victory in the pharmacy field. To manage the problems in the profession, they should possess the managerial skills. Keep these words in mind, “good management, good business”