An Interview with 'The Pharmacist Coach'

Recently, I was interviewed for one of my alma maters, Real Balance Global Wellness Services

Rachel, how did you end up as ‘The Pharmacist Coach?’

Since owning my first flock of pet lambs at the age of 7, entrepreneurship, leadership, health, wellbeing and mental fitness has always been at the heart of who I am and what I do. 

My approach has been informed by my experience growing up on a farm, travelling and working with a variety of people in six continents, working in acute and mental health hospital settings, running a community pharmacy business and training and coaching businesses for the past decade, while being Mum to three children (now teenagers). 

As a registered pharmacist since 1996, I have seen and faced a variety of challenges.  But 2011-2013 presented challenges of a different magnitude for my family and I.  My grandparents (with whom I had spent every summer from the age of 5) died.  My husband’s parents both ended up in different hospitals and my Dad was diagnosed with cancer.  Both our family business and the pharmacy business I was employed by simultaneously experienced major financial challenges as a result of the economic crash.  All this while working full time and having three children in primary school and managing a community pharmacy which was struggling to survive.  Personally, professionally and financially – it felt like a perfect storm. 

What inspired you to study Diet, Health and Wellness Coaching with Real Balance and the Institute of Health Sciences?

At that point, I realised my support system was as overwhelmed as I was.  I knew I had to find other ways to resource myself, and if I didn’t, I would not be able to support my team, my patients, my children, my husband, my parents, my work colleagues or our businesses to navigate the challenges we faced.

With that backdrop, I started a Diploma in Personal and Business Coaching with the Irish Lifecoach Institute.  Over that year, I noticed a growing difference in my approach to parenting, family relationships and even the quality of my conversations at the pharmacy counter.  This piqued an interest in pursuing further studies in the area of health and wellness coaching, as I hoped specialisation could further help me to apply generic coaching skills to a healthcare context.  I was delighted to discover the IHS in Ireland.  What attracted me most was that it prides itself on combining the scientific rigour in nutritional science with the coach approach to client consultations.  I enrolled on a fascinating two years studying for my Diploma in Diet, Health and Wellness Coaching.  Travelling that journey with the support of the teaching faculty and my class peers was an entirely positive experience.  The first year focused on the science and impact of nutrition on health, led by the Institute of Health Science.  The second year Michael Arloski PhD, CEO of Real Balance and pioneering author and teacher in the field of wellness coaching personally led our coach training, which focused on evidenced based behavioural change psychology, human motivation, cultural support, and professional coaching competencies.  I particularly enjoyed the modules where we applied coaching strategies to support health behaviour change, stress management and also learned Neurolinguistic Programming with Shane Pearson.  I was fortunate to be able to immediately use these powerful skills to integrate the traditional work of a dispensing pharmacist with empowering, enabling and equipping our patients and our pharmacy team to be proactive about managing both their medication prescription and their lifestyle prescription through our innovative Pharmacy Consultation Service. 

What do you see as the gifts of facing the challenges of the past decade?

As a pharmacist, mother and business owner, I know what it is like to feel utterly depleted.  I know what it is like to do my best, but to feel like I am only just surviving.  I know what it is like to finally realise that the way I was working isn’t working, isn’t healthy and isn’t sustainable. I also know what it is like to work with a coach to break old, counter-productive patterns and beliefs, re-connect with why I did pharmacy in the first place and to create sustainable healthy, behaviour change.  If I can do it, I have 100% belief that my clients can too (even before they do!)

As I continue to integrate my work as ‘The Pharmacist Coach,’ I have expanded my world-view and my network beyond all recognition and I have had opportunities I would never have thought possible.  For example, I have worked with an incredible range of courageous clients – healthcare leaders seeking to change the status quo, female professionals seeking promotion, entrepreneurs dealing with a health condition that impacts their personal and financial health.  I have been privileged to serve as a peer support pharmacist and mentoring ambassador with the Irish Institute of Pharmacy, global co-leader of the International Coaching Federation Health and Wellness Coaching Community of Practice with Dr Arloski for three years and coordinator of ICF Ireland’s Medical Coaching Circle for two years.  

One of the other gifts has been meeting and collaborating with people from a wide variety of disciplines, cultures and expertise.  As a result, I have a rich referral network of trusted colleagues with whom I have reciprocal agreements so we can best support one another’s clients.

How have you integrated what you have learned as a Pharmacist and as a Leadership and Wellbeing Coach?

From personal and professional experience, I know how tempting it is to neglect our own wellbeing when times get tough.  However, I have also learned that the price of self-neglect is unacceptably high.  It is precisely when life gets more challenging that we must consciously and consistently invest in our physical and mental health foundation.  When we don’t, we simply do not have the physical, mental or emotional energy and health to face the challenges life presents us with. 

As part of walking my talk, I am my own ‘patient zero’.  My focus is to live in increasing integrity with my own healthy lifestyle prescription, and to work with my clients to do the same.  I am a constant work in progress, especially with the demands of being a mother of three teenagers, a healthcare professional during COVID and a leadership and wellbeing coach for CEOs and their teams during turbulent times.  I enrolled originally in the IHS Diploma as a way of supporting my pharmacy clients to be proactive about their health and wellbeing and to offer Lifestyle Medicine Consultations to their patients. 

I believe that Pharmacist expertise combined with masterful Health, Wellbeing and Leadership Coaching are a winning combination to empower pharmacy to 'unite in action for a healthier world' and to 'help people get the best from their medicines and stay healthy' - FIP World Pharmacists Day 25 Sep 2022.

Inspired to serve my pharmacy colleagues and our patients, I co-founded 4FrontPharmacy Online, an award-winning pharmacy team training platform, which provides staff training on lifestyle advice as well as information on the medical condition, OTC products and consultation skills.  

How do you personally engage in Continuing Professional Development (CPD)?

One of the ways I engage in reflective practice is to have weekly one-to-one sessions with my coach.  I also lead and participate in monthly group super-vision practice where 3-4 colleagues challenge our professional practice and explore what worked, what did not work and what we could do differently.  One of the reflective practices pioneered by the International Coaching Federation I most appreciate is the opportunity to demonstrate advancing level of mastery of core competencies. The practice of recording and listening back to sessions, through the lens of competencies demonstrated is a powerful reflective practice tool.  I continually evolve and grow from both giving and receiving coach mentoring.  Of course, I record my learnings in my ePortfolio!   

Since attaining my initial Diploma in Personal and Business Coaching back in 2011 and receiving my initial training in health and wellness coaching with Real Balance,  I have continued to broaden and deepen my personal and professional learning by completing advanced training as a

It was wonderful to partner again with Real Balance in 2022 to participate in Dr Arloski's 'Masterful Wellness and Health Coaching: Advanced Skills & Craft' course as I prepared my eligibility to sit the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaching Examination administered by the National Board of Medical Examiners in the USA.  

As part of my ongoing CPD, I facilitate implementation mastery sessions with the World Executive and Business Coaching Summit.  This ensures my thinking and practice stays at the cutting edge of the latest global trends in leadership coaching research & methodologies, leadership & organisational development, team coaching & dynamics, neuroscience, psychology and wellness at work.  

Learning cutting edge approaches with global thought leaders and practising them with brilliant participants from a vast range of cultural and professional backgrounds enables me to deepen my capacity to navigate the challenges I face, and to empower my clients (and their teams) to put their own oxygen masks on first, thrive as a person, and be a leader who inspires others to be and do their best. 

To enable my pharmacy clients to self-assess where best to put the lens of focus for their CPD efforts, I created a 6Ps of Pharmacy Excellence Self-Assessment Tool.  I have found that intentionally designed CPD almost always creates value across all 6Ps.  I love working with clients to create a learning and development journey that both inspires them and simultaneously benefits their energy, work performance and relationships.

It sounds as if you dedicated the first decade of your working life to mastery in pharmacy, the second decade to personal mastery and this third decade to mastery of leadership and wellbeing coaching!  It sounds like quite a journey so far!

Yes.  That’s true.  Professionalism, growth and quality assurance are important values for me, so I tend to go deep in whatever field I choose.  I am proud to be a registered pharmacist.  I am proud to be a professional coach.  And I am proud to be continually growing and developing as the person who is ‘The Pharmacist Coach.’ 

You clearly have a growth-oriented mindset and vast experience in pharmacy and coaching.  Does any of your work include helping others to succeed on their career path?

Absolutely.  I am privileged to mentor pharmacists, coaches and students to prepare their mindset and skillset to perform at their best in their performance evaluation examinations.  I love to see my mentees’ confidence and competence grow as we work together.  It brings me even more joy to continue to work with many of these clients as they apply the skills we practiced in patient-facing and leadership contexts.   

As a volunteer, I donate coaching and mentoring time to support causes very close to my heart

  1. Irish Institute of Pharmacy Mentoring in Practice | IIoP Portal which focuses on peer mentoring with my pharmacist colleagues.  As pharmacists, I believe it is important (for us and for the patients and communities we serve) that we have each others back in times of need and in times of growth.  
  2. CoachingFoundation.org where I coach female leaders in the WILD Network (Women Innovators & Leadership Development Network), a non-profit movement to advance women's leadership as well as equity, diversity and inclusion in the global development sector. 
  3. Living Well Leader and program quality mentor with the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program, licensed through Stanford University and offered through various organisations in Ireland, such as the HSE and Living Well with Arthritis online | Arthritis Ireland. My work in this programme empowers patients to be active managers of their own health, which equips them to better advocate for their needs and partner with their healthcare professional team. 

My experience as a trained assessor of both pharmacy and coaching performance evaluations inspired me to create a healthcare consultation framework called STEPS™ to empower healthcare professionals, patients and carers to use a coach approach to get to the heart of the problem and engage in productive health consultations.   

What do you enjoy most about working with emerging and experienced leaders? 

I know that none of us can be a solo leader nowadays, because the challenges we face in work, at home and in our society are too complex for any single person to solve alone.  I thoroughly enjoy being a strategic thought partner with leaders because the shifts a leader makes affect so many people.  For example, (whether they perceive it or not) a pharmacist is a leader who profoundly impacts their working environment and that of their team.  A pharmacist also has the opportunity to directly impact the health and wellbeing of every customer with whom they interact. Each of those customers directly impacts the friends, family and colleagues with whom they interact.  So a pharmacist’s influence ripples through hundreds of families and workplaces, as well as the thousands of individuals with whom they interact.

A leader (in any sphere of life) who is stressed, over-worked and burnt-out quite simply cannot be as inspiring, innovative and empowering a leader as one who is firing on all cylinders.  There is wisdom to the saying ‘Happy Mum, Happy home!’  In the workplace, you could say ‘Happy boss, happy workplace!’  While we all impact the environment or culture in which we operate, those of us with positions of power, such as leaders, parents or managers have a disproportionately larger impact on everyone else.  Research and the experience of my clients suggest that from a place of flourishing ourselves, we expand our capacity to lead healthy, functioning teams, and have a powerfully positive ripple effect on those we are privileged to lead and serve.  And yet, as leaders, who bear a heavy weight of responsibility for others and for results, it is both more difficult and more important to be proactive about getting support to develop and maintain a strong personal wellness foundation - including physical energy, mental and emotional wellbeing and having a sense of meaning and purpose.  

Being a pharmacist, a coach and a mother with training and experience in multiple specialities to support optimum performance and wellbeing, I get great joy from helping brilliant people to overcome the barriers they face, reduce overwhelm, drive innovation and focus on what is most important by giving them a safe space to pause, reflect, create a healthy, all-encompassing well-life vision and take the steps necessary to let their brilliance shine!   

What do leaders find most valuable about working with you?

I find that people in leadership roles, with so many things changing around them – find it difficult to find anyone to talk candidly with about the personal, professional, business and world challenges they face.

If they have a spouse, that person is tired of hearing about it.  Confidentiality issues prevent open discussion.  Often, in the thick of surviving from one day to the next, a leader can lose sight of who they are and what is most important.  Unfortunately, the further down the road of energy depletion and stress we go, the narrower our perspective gets.  We can easily get stuck in survival mode.  

The value leaders articulate most often as super valuable to them is 'Having someone who gets it, with whom I can talk it over and figure out what to do next.'  'The most valuable aspect to me is having the space to reflect, see things from different points of view and make better informed decisions.'  'Time with Rachel is time focused on what I need to be at my best, so that I have the energy to be a better leader, a better professional and a better person.'

If you had one question for our students, what would it be?

Remember, YOU are the Chief Executive/Energy Officer (CEO) of your Life.  Your alma mater(s) and class colleagues could be members of your Board of Directors.  How best could you leverage this asset?  Who else could be a great addition on your personal, professional and business Board of Directors as you create your well-life vision and reach for your goals?   

Remember too, your clients and those you super-vise are CEO of their lives.  Enabling them to assemble a life Board of Directors (of which you are a member), that supports them to achieve their health and wellbeing goals is powerful. 

I believe that as we get busy minding our own business and equipping, enabling, empowering and engaging our family, friends, colleagues and clients to become more and more response-able for theirs, we will leave the world a better place than we entered it. 😊    

Onward and upward!