Vision 2010: Pharmacy Executive Leadership Skills and Associated Competencies in the Department of Defense

The purpose of this study was to identify the issues that senior Department of Defense(DoD) pharmacy officers will face in the future, as well as the skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) required to perform at the senior executive level. The study employed two iterations of the Delphi method for executive decision-making separated by an expert panel content analysis. Ninety-three DoD pharmacists serving in the pay grades of O-5, O-6, or selected for promotion to those grades, were selected as participants in this study. During the first phase, participants identified five major issues that are believed to be of greatest importance to pharmacy leaders.Respondents then reported specific SKAs that might be needed to deal with those issues. The first phase of the Delphi had a response rate of 44.1 percent and generated 62 unique issues facing pharmacy executives. An expert panel of the three most senior pharmacy executives in each military branch was convened to review and sort the issues from phase one into a set of meaningful domain categories, as well as to select an appropriate title for each domain. A total of eight domain categories were created: human resources, pharmacy operations/business practices, information management and technology, financial resources, formulary management, drug therapy management, pharmacy benefit management, and leadership. During the Delphi s second phase, respondents provided ratings using a 7-point relative importance-rating scale for the SKA items within each of the domains based on which competencies the respondent felt thata future DoD pharmacy executive should possess. The response rate for phase two of the Delphi was 46.2 percent. During this phase, 73.33 percent of the top 15 rated SKA items came from the drug therapy management, leadership, and formulary management domains. Results indicate that the issues f