Sharon Enright has a stellar history in the pharmacy profession. She was with the ASHP for eleven years in a variety of capacities, most recently as the director of the division of planning and reimbursement. She left the ASHP in 1984 and started the Enright Group, a consultant group that looked at quality improvement of the medication use process. Sharon sold this company in 1999 to Cardinal Health. PharmacyNow was thrilled to spend some time recently with Sharon and share her ideas on the importance of mentoring and communication.

PNOW: How do you define mentoring?

SE: Mentoring to me is more than a program. It’s not just something that you can define in concrete terms or put in a box. It has more soul. It is really something that happens or it doesn’t happen. There is a mental click and it creates a relationship that is enduring.

PNOW: Could you tell us a little bit about your early history in pharmacy?

SE: I am a graduate of the University of Connecticut school of Pharmacy. I did my residency in hospital pharmacy at Yale New Haven Hospital and then subsequently moved on to the executive level residency program at the American Society of HospitalPharmacists, now Health Systems Pharmacists. This was a one-year training program in association management, which was a marvelous opportunity to be exposed to the issues and trends in pharmacy processing in health care. When I completed that residency, I began a eleven year relationship with the ASHP.

PNOW: Did you engage in a mentoring program during your residency at either Yale New Haven Hospital or ASHP?

SE: Absolutely. Mentoring is a key component of what you would anticipate from a residency program. However, despite the best intentions of designing mentoring into a program like a residency, sometimes it occurs and sometimes it doesn’t. I was very fortunate that I had an excellent mentor in my residency program and the relationship has continued on over the years.

PNOW: Being proactive is an important component in mentoring. What do you see as the biggest barrier to a mentee reaching out?

SE: Actually, more often then not, it is a lack of self esteem or confidence that the mentor, who has so much to offer, would be willing to invest in you. That is why it comes down to the mentor acknowledging or recognizing the potential and capability in the mentee; this creates a situation of self-confidence and allows the relationship to move forward in a positive way.

PNOW: There is no getting around that mentoring is a two way street. Who are the people you would count as your mentors?

SE: First, let me say this. I think there are a lot of ways that people mentor you. I really see mentors in my life in four ways: personal mentors, educational mentors, professional colleagues, and, finally, mutual or peer mentors. By personal mentors, I mean, certainly, parents and individuals that are important early in your life, who create a foundation of values that sees you through your life; values that create the boundaries and limits of how you see yourself.
Next, there are the educator- types of mentors who, either by their direct contact and influence, or through your association with their work, become key mentors. These were people in my graduate program that directly provided that kind of direction ; for me, Jerry Harvey was one at the George Washington University School of Business. Some others were a little bit more remote, but created a kind of directional thought that to this day continues to support my understanding of life and work; they are Warren Bennis, Peter Senge and Meg Wheatley. Also, my residency preceptor at Yale, Don Beste and Joe Oddis at ASHP would be included here.
Other professional colleagues who crossed paths with me over the years provided a different kind of reinforcement and challenge. These are folks that, throughout my career path, acknowledged and recognized the work that I was doing. They encouraged me, spurred me on with questions, and provided stimulating contact with individuals that had similar interests. Some of these individuals are Dave Zilz,, formerly with the University of Wisconsin, and Paul Parker at the University of Kentucky.
And finally, there are people with whom you enter into a kind of mutual mentoring. You bring something to the table and they bring something to the table. Although you are peers, these are people who are constantly nurturing your thought process throughout your career. For me, these are people like Pam Ploetz , Billy Woodward and nursing colleagues, including Marcia Thompson.

PNOW: We all have some things that we can do, in are own style, to tap in as a mentee or mentor. Can you comment on different mentoring styles?

SE: I think that it always takes getting out of ones skin. There were lots of folks, particularly as I started my own consulting business, that I timidly picked up the phone and asked advice. They were extremely generous with their time, and in sharing their thought process about managed care resolution and quality improvement. You know, it takes a lot of courage for me to pick up the phone and place a phone call to Don Berwick, who doesn’t know me from the crowd, and to have him pick up the phone and say: Sure, I would be happy to talk to you about the implications for medication safety in this very complex health care system. More often than not, these preeminent names that are legends or perhaps heroes to us, are more than happy to share their thoughts; but you need to make the effort to be in touch with them. Similarly, there are people in our everyday life, who perhaps don’t have the recognition of others, but have very valuable lessons to teach us. Certainly, there are thousands of people who I have interacted with over the years who have had a great deal of valuable information. It is stepping outside your skin. The first thing that you need to acknowledge is you have value- you have information that you can share. Secondly, that there are a lot of things that you don’t know, and there are people that can help you through.. It is about acknowledging you don’t know everything, and asking the question,”How can you help me understand this?”

PNOW: Have most of your contacts been geographically close to you?

SE:There definitely have been some relationships that just by the nature of your pace of life and location have become long distant. The important link is that you don’t necessarily lose those relationships because of distance. There are people that you mentor and who are mentored by you in your everyday life. It is a relationship that you can accept and move forward with, or deny. Regardless of where I have been located geographically, there has been a community of people around me who created the kind of professional intellectual mentoring that I needed to be able to continue to grow and learn. This exists for me here in Richmond, where I am currently located, with the people that I work with on a daily basis. It certainly existed in Washington D.C. when I was with ASHP. The important part is that relationships are not just limited to the people who surround you on a day-to-day basis.

PNOW: Are there some specific strategies that are particularly conducive to an optimal environment for mentoring?

SE: Mentoring ultimately comes down to an effective dialogue between people about things that are important to them. When you share common interests, when you share different expertise, or when you have the opportunity to bring the thought processes of two individuals together to explore complex concepts, each person walks away with a better understanding, and a better opportunity for resolution of those issues. This allows them to take a perspective that they had not before that dialogue, and then move forward with it in new directions. So, whatever you need to do to foster that kind of a dialogue is what you need to bring to the table. Because of the compression of health care systems and the reduction in the number of middle management positions, the greatest challenge is that meaningful dialogue is not an option in many practice settings. It becomes a real constraint to try to carve out time for real dialogue and real conversation. It is a personal commitment to find that time, to have that kind of meeting point to share ideas.

PNOW: How do you carve out time for that kind of real dialogue?

SE: There is no question that workload acuity of the manpower situation has all come together to create a very unique and high-powered situation in the healthcare process environment. I don’t see anything on the horizon that says that is likely to change. I do believe, however , there have been other times that have been nearly as frenetic. There have been other manpower shortages that have been extremely acute, certainly in my memory. What we have to acknowledge is that in any situation you make time for the things that are important. I am not trying to minimize the pressures that managers and lay people are under today, but if it is important to find a mentoring opportunity either as a mentor or mentee, you need to make time for that. You need to build that into your plan of action. You need to know what it is that you are seeking: what kind of skills, insights and direction. You then look for other people around you that can provide that. It may be that it is as simple as identifying those people - if they are clinicians, tracking them in their practice; watch how they interact with other health professionals and see if you can emulate those behaviors. I think that you have to make it a priority.

PN: As you were developing your consulting business, how did mentoring come into play for you?

SE: I think a descriptive statement about the kinds of services that have been provided through the Enright Group, and other consulting initiatives I have been involved with, is they involve strategic change about complex issues where there are no readily apparent solutions. Under those circumstances, the only way to effectively come to a conclusion about how to go forward successfully is to have a very open dialogue with lots of people, in lots of places, in lots of roles. You need to get down to the bare bones of the common issues and the common thoughts of people with a lot of perspectives. That really is at the core of mentoring, whichever end you are in - on the receiving or on the giving end. This concept of mutual mentoring has really been at the core of the ideas, products and services that we’ve been able to generate. This process has been of use to practitioners in meeting very specific and very immediate needs that they had no readily available solutions for.

PNOW: What is your preferred method of communication in these interactions?

SE: I think that it always starts with questions. It starts with acknowledging what you don’t understand, and asking people questions about what they see as the answers and opportunities - where they have difficulty and what they seek about a major issue. We all have a valuable perspective on, for example, medication safety. We all have different information. I am convinced that the answer to our medication safety problem exists. The problem is that it is so fragmented and spread over large numbers of people(pharmacists, nurses, administrators) that we have not been able to put it together. But mentoring types of relationships allow you to identify all the important factors.

PN: Would it matter if dialogue occurred over a phone or by E-mail?

SE: No. You need to take advantage of every possible way to open that dialogue. You know it is always nice to be face to face. There is a real advantage to that. It certainly helps in the evolution of a relationship, and mentoring has to be ultimately about a relationship. However,communication is so diverse and easy now that meeting face-to face is far less important today then it was in the past. For example, the consulting efforts that I have been involved in have never involved a work group that existed in that geographic location. It has always been a virtual organization where our people were dispersed throughout the country and sometimes the world. We rely very heavily on electronic and phone communication to do our work.

PNOW: What kind of advice would you give the young pharmacy professional hoping to have the kind of rewarding career that you have experienced?

SE: It is important to think about what your aspirations and career goals are, and then to think about the factors, skills, and capabilities that are going to help in making you successful. Once you do that, you need to look around in your professional environment for individual information, knowledge, skills or insights that are going to help you to achieve.
This helps you to fast track your experience and perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls that others have avoided in their careers. It is important to remember that people are typically very generous with their time and they will be flattered to be asked for input and advice. If you talk to a sufficient number of people, you will undoubtedly find someone who will provide that long-term relationship. It is a natural evolution, but you need to take that first step to start that moving. For me, the whole mentoring process became such a natural part of my life, it is almost continual. I don’t think there is a single phone conversation I have where I don’t either end up being the mentor or the mentee.