Teva packaging

[johnep]

The bright colours and contrasting strength indicators were trumpeted by Teva as a great advance in safety.

At the London meeting, packs of Teva prednisolone and propranolol were held up---- they were colour scheme identical.

Yesterday had a script for Paracetamol and Quinine tabs. Both Teva packs were colour scheme identical blue and green.

P and Q follow each other so possibility of being in same drawer. 2 qds of quinine would certainly cause problems. Another accident waiting to happen?

I understand that economy demands not too many colours, but different schemes for products likely to be stored close together should surely be easy to achieve.
johnep

[Smithy]

agree that the packaging has not been thought through

a) did any pharmacists advise on the packaging if so can they be named and shamed

b) how did they manage to get the space on the back for the label smaller than the standard label size??? the coloured 'frame' should have been bolder and the name of the product across the whole of the top of the box in black bold type -- not in outline as now.

c) on many of the products the weakest strengths are highlighted in the strongest colours--------the exact oposite of what one would expect

[Sir_Dispensalot]

be glad it's not like the Ransom packaging - every bloody box is identical in typeface, colouring and style and all boxes are pretty close to each other in size.
I'm glad we only get their stock when we absolutely have to!

[johnep]

I thought Ransom only supplied Alateris brand of 750mg Glucosamine HCl.
What else do they produce?
johnep

[Pharmanaut]

Some of the brand packaging leaves a lot to be desired as well.
Cozaar anyone?

[SolomonQ]

Diclofenac 75mg SR and Erythromycin 250mg BY Sovereign

[PtitpupUK]

Not long ago we had a company scale notification to make sure we could clearly distinguish two packets of warfarin, one being the 0.5mg in a white packet with a couple of red squares, and the TEVA packaging of the 0.5mg which is pink. TBH packets were totally different, but someone must have made a dispensing error for this "similarity" to be communicated to all branches. Nothing was ever mentioned about bendro 2.5 being exactly the same as levothyroxine 50, levothyroxine 100 being exactly the same as one of the strength of spironolactone (sorry it's early in the morning can't remember the strength), cetirizine 10mg being the same as some boxes of diazepam 10mg etc etc...
Yes the colours are great, but surely more colour combinations can be obtained from them, if they run out of colour schemes they should temper with the white of the box like they do with warfarin and do an orange box with a green round, I think that would make it easier.

[DavidS]

Yes the colours are great,

Barcode reading integrated with pmr software is the answer.
I've been saying it for 5 years. No-one is interested.
Come on, prophase! Don't let me down!

[PtitpupUK]

I do believe that we rely enough on machines TBH -- when our computer software went down last week we weren't too chuffed about not being able to do anything -- but barcode reading as you mention above, although I don't know much about it, could be a useful tool for preventing mistakes, as long as it's double checked, because our software already does have mistakes from when data was input by someone who obviously doesn't know about drugs, so it's never 100% reliable.

[Pharmanaut]

I do believe that we rely enough on machines TBH -- when our computer software went down last week we weren't too chuffed about not being able to do anything -- but barcode reading as you mention above, although I don't know much about it, could be a useful tool for preventing mistakes, as long as it's double checked, because our software already does have mistakes from when data was input by someone who obviously doesn't know about drugs, so it's never 100% reliable.

If you have a problem with the product file on your system please call it in.
The people who do the files are often pharmacy staff and have access to all of the information EXCEPT the physical product! That's were we can help them to help us!