Practice-Multiple interpretations

An article in TOI, March 31, 2019 caught my attention- This is what it read like “Practice alone won't make you perfect”. It also had a picture of a golfer where the caption read- Getting worse with every stroke: Mindless practice only hardens your faulty technique with repetition. Is this true for our workplaces, I wondered. The pathway of healthcare and manufacturing or testing of pharmaceuticals seemed a good case for contemplation.

The primary aspect for a patient is to be healed and to be able to have a quality of life that is considered normal.

For a drug product to heal, it must have journeyed through thousands of hands, capable of adding this healing factor. If a ‘practice’ for a particular ‘technique’ is faulty, is unknown, remains unidentified and lies enmeshed in the deep layers of experience, how is that accounted for? Is there any visibility or foresight to this element of safety of the drug product?

The next factor expected to be built-in is the purity of the drug product. Are there faulty ‘techniques’ that are being handed down as ‘practices’? Do checks ensure that techniques are correct and that they are repetitive despite all situations? Are there parameters for checking practices to qualify the purity of the drug product?

The element that follows close on the heels of safety and purity is efficacy. The assumption that one can build in efficacy seems fallible under this principle of it being limited to testing. Testing alone does not provide evidence of the output being efficacious. Should one evaluate other considerations for ensuring efficacy of the drug product?

The quality component of the drug product, more often than not, that is taken for granted. The innumerable checklists, the variety of audits, the inestimable hours spent in inspection and testing, the countless hands that participate in having all of this documented and reviewed, (…and that list can go on endlessly!) do all of this establish mastery of skills during creating that dosage form?

The idea that you can master a skill by practicing it for 10,000 hours has become a modern gospel, but Professor Anders Ericsson, of Florida State University says that this tenet is misleading and wasteful. Professor Ericsson says “One need to practice with purpose…It is not about the total time spent practicing, it needs to be matched with the commitment of the student. Are they correcting, are they changing what they do. It is not clear why some people think that doing more of making the same mistakes will make you better.”

The chronology of the safety, purity, efficacy and quality can be altered, yet the questions that pop out are (i) Are results of the techniques of process improvement stemming from having to focus on the number of times it has been practiced? (ii) Do practices in the pharmaceutical domain need to be revisited? (iii) Are all techniques adopted in the various stages of development, testing, manufacture, release and transportation built on commitment of those hands that heal?

After reading this article, I’d think a review of basics/ fundamentals of the various techniques and its practice, those that are embedded/entrenched so deeply in the domain, could benefit with some amount of hoeing and clearing!

P.S.: Do you think that caption would read better if it went from “Practice alone does not make you Perfect” to “Practice to Progress”. (Progress in the right way, with the right techniques or regress in the negative direction if wrong techniques are institutionalised.)?

Source of inspiration: Article in TOI, March 31, 2019