Choose the appropriate method of running your dispensary. Decide whether you want your dispensary to be a community-run dispensary, a government-affiliated dispensary or one that is privately operated.
Select a hiring criterion for a qualified pharmacist to run your dispensary. Will experience be the most important qualification, or academic merit?
Hire a qualified pharmacist to help you with the proper dispensation of drugs if you are not one yourself. Every pharmacy and drugstore is required by law to have a qualified and certified pharmacist. You can a hire a pharmacist graduating from any of the 16 institutions of higher learning that produced a total of 1,472 graduates as of 2007.
Choose a hiring criterion for the pharmacy dispensary technician or assist staff, depending on your location. While dispensary assist staff in Australia is mostly made up of unskilled labor, in the states of Victoria and Queensland a dispensary assist technician is required to have some formal skill or knowledge. This is a requirement of the pharmacy board that is met by every pharmacy in Victoria, which includes the city of Melbourne.
Hire pharmacy assist staff to help the pharmacist run her daily activities so as to achieve efficiency.
Organize your dispensary and staff to offer fast and effective services to customers. Place the pharmacist at the forefront to enable him to discuss with the customer options for alternative drugs, thereby enhancing cross-selling.
Create a database to enable easy tracking of inventory. Take down the name and quantity of medicine that comes into your dispensary every day and key it into the database. Take inventory of the stock you have left at the end of each day and key that into your database as well. Constantly update your database.
Adopt a reliable security system to ensure the security of your premises. This gives your employees and customers the peace of mind of knowing they are safe at your dispensary. Install security cameras in your premises to make it easier for the security agency to keep an eye on all activities going on inside the dispensary.
Research current market trends to determine the types of medicines frequently bought. The Australian market is mainly a prescription-only market. This means that most of the drugs purchased are as a result of prescriptions from medical practitioners and not self-medication. Most practitioners operate under the government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to obtain subsides for medicines.