Eight Bestway Team Members Complete Pharmaceutical Handling Training

The gold standard in best practices for handling pharmaceutical and medical products comes as part of a European Union-backed certification known as Good Distribution Practice.

Bestway is currently in the process of obtaining the certification, and along the way we can already report some important milestones that have been achieved.

In February, team members Kaitlin Rusbasky and Linda Reynolds became the latest of what is now eight Bestway team members who have successfully completed their GDP training in pharmaceutical and medical device handling.

They join Lance Jones, Cody Reynolds, Helen Ross, Rick Belk, Wade Waldren and Chance Pope in having completed the training – which takes two full days and looks at a variety of issues.

“It’s to ensure the products are safe and meet their intended use,” Pope says. “A few of the central aspects include traceability and accountability, as well as proper handling. One of the first questions people will ask when shipping pharmaceuticals is if we are GDP-certified, so they know we understand what it takes to handle their products.”

The successful completion of team-member training is one step in a months-long process that leads to company certification. And it’s critical in a space like pharma shipping, because customers typically value risk mitigation over cost saving.

“As a non-asset-based freight-forwarder, Bestway’s GDP program emphasizes control of partners, documentation accuracy and temperature-controlled logistics oversight,” Pope says. “We think of our carriers as partners, so we work with carriers that are either GDP-certified or operate under GDP guidelines.”

And anyone is better at oversight if they’ve also been trained in the function they’re overseeing.

“Knowing the questions to ask is critical,” Pope says. “Take a situation where you have a refrigerated trailer, and a trucker who is handling refrigerated transport from a shipper’s door to the airport. The equipment they’re using has to be heat-mapped and have different kinds of qualification attributes. This training helps us to know what to look for before we qualify the carrier if they’re not GDP-certified, and if they are, what questions to ask to validate said certification beyond just providing the certificate.”

We’re proud to have such highly trained team members. Contact us if you would like us to put that knowledge to work for you.