Reduce Human Errors in Pharmaceuticals

Human errors have a serious impact on the quality of pharmaceutical products. About 80% of product quality problems are caused by human error. Human errors are identified when deviations occur in the process. Most of the root causes of deviations are human error due to improper communication or failure to follow written procedures.

Below are some solutions to reduce human error.
1. Identify opportunities for error reduction: A place where a human error can occur in production and quality control must be identified. It should identify separately for equipment, documentation and systems where improvements can be made.

2. Redesign procedures: Make necessary changes to standard operating procedures and formats that are long and difficult to follow by users. Procedures should be concise and clearly written. Try to make formats and forms as short and easy to fill as possible. Write clear instructions to address where human error is likely. Remove sections from methods and formats that are not useful

3. Improve supervision: Supervisors should guide workers and pharmacists at every stage of production. Work instructions should be given by the supervisor before starting a specific task. Supervisors should be on the floor, not in the office.

4. Improve Communication: Communication plays an important role in reducing human error. Lack of communication in different shifts creates many problems. Sometimes the night shift workers do not communicate the results of the process to the morning shift in-charge which causes problems. Communication between quality assurance and production departments should be proper at every stage.

5. Allocation of Work: The performance of individual workers should be monitored by the supervisor and assigned work according to their capabilities. This will give better results and also reduce the chances of human error. Every time you assign a task, find the best person for that task for successful completion.

6. Training: All critical activities require on-the-job training for all personnel. Training should include all possible human errors and related questions that may occur during the process.

This is a common way to prevent human error during pharmaceutical manufacturing. Multiple checks and signatures during the process can reduce the incidence of human error. We should find areas of improvement in the process we are conducting. Improvement is a continuous process that never ends. Share with us in the comments what you have done to reduce human error in your workplace.

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