Pharmaceutical Packaging Audit is a Milepost web site for Pharmacy and the presentation of Pharmaceutical Products

Pharmaceutical Packaging and Presentation

Most pharmacists will tell you that the packaging design of too many pharmaceutical products is already worthy of Lewis Carol's realm of imagination.

At a time of radical change in packaging requirements the authors believe that the industry is at risk of becoming even more distanced from the real world in which their products are handled. This belief is based upon numerous collected observations from the very people who come into the closest possible daily contact with our industry's whole spectrum of products - the Pharmacists. So topsy-turvy has this world of Pharmaceutical Packaging become, Pharmacists are really starting to believe that it might be peopled by Mad Hatters.

How otherwise can we explain the incidence of appalling packaging practice, among the many thousands of pharmaceutical products in use, being so much higher than that encountered in other manufacturing industries. When we do handle and look at products from other industries, for example the food industry, we feel that we have returned to the real world. Here the designs for packaging and labelling are broadly sensible and they do achieve the recognised objects of good packaging and labelling design.

These objects extend well beyond the provision of pleasing, secure and suitable enclosures for the product, what we might call its 'wrapping', they also encompass its presentation. It is within this aspect of packaging that our Pharmaceutical Industry is so lacking.

Pharmacists are getting so hot under the collar over this issue because it is of vital importance to them and ultimately to the patients whose care they are sharing with all the other health professionals. If poor packaging, or product presentation through bad label design, is a contributory factor in selecting the English mustard rather than the Dijon then it is probably only your palate that will briefly suffer. If your pharmacist has the misfortune to inadvertently select from the dispensary shelf a package, almost identical in appearance to its neighbour of a very different character, then it might be far more than the palate that is offended.

In the technical / medical environment of the dispensary; the hospital ward, clinic or operating theatre the prime object and essential function of product presentation is that of establishing product identity. Establishing it without ambiguity, establishing it rapidly and establishing it clearly.

So, what really is happening in the realm of Pharmaceutical Packaging that gives pharmacists so much obvious cause for concern? We wish that we could give you a simple answer. It would be tidy and straightforward if we could, for example, simply say "They all use a print size that is far too small. This greatly increases the risk of our making mistakes". This example problem is typical of the many, many illustrations that we can produce - but it is only a part of the whole problem.

The problem is surmountable and we are able to show you in our Wish List how the manufacturer of these (now dated) packs has succeeded in differentiating between products with similar names.

These problems are not the exclusive preserve of the pharmacist they are also suffered by nurses, doctors, patients and by their carers. You will hear frightening stories that originate from members of all these groups who have been unfortunate enough to have mistakenly selected an incorrect pharmaceutical product.

We don't want this site to seem like one big moan-list but we can't avoid it being something of a wish-list. So let's make it a proper, full blown, bells and whistles wish list. Then we can use each wish to show how poor standards of presentation make the Pharmacist's work difficult, and how they unnecessarily introduce hazards into the process of selecting the correct prescribed medicines in the dispensary, at home or on the ward.

Now the good news. This is not going to be a long list; we have just two wishes.

On to Wish Number One