GMP trainer Dominic Parry talked with us about his experiences and the new normal of virtual GMP trainings
Due to the comprehensive changes in the way trainings are done since the pandemic, we did an interview with the GMP trainer Dominic Parry from Inspired Pharma Training! Before the pandemic, all courses were held as face-to-face sessions, but this has now changed completely.
Every course is now online and virtual. Dominic talked with us about the new normal, also about his experiences and the specifics in dealing with the new way of teaching. We learned many unexpected things and Dominic told us a lot of interesting aspects in this extensive interview! See the interview or read the full transcript below!
Watch the full interview here:
Transcript of the interview with Dominic Parry:
Pharma Excipients: Welcome! My name is Tom Grathwohl from Pharma Excipients, and I’m interviewing Dominic Parry from Inspired Pharma today. Inspired Pharma Training was established in 2010 by Dominic Parry, one of the UK’s leading pharmaceutical trainers. With over 20 years of pharmaceutical experience, Dominic is widely seen as one of the best trainers in the business. And they also have proven online courses, including the world’s first online Qualified Person training modules.
Whatever your GMP training needs are, Inspired Pharma has the right solution for you. They offer a series of live online interactive classroom courses that run on a six monthly basis, at least, and often more regularly. In addition, they have developed a range of online GMP training courses which can be used as a part of a GMP compliance training program, deployed in a GMP refresher training program, or used as part of a GMP induction training program, or just used by an individual to acquire a good basic understanding of GMP.
These online courses can also be complemented with workshop activities designed and delivered by Inspired Pharma experts to maximize the impact of any of these programs. Moreover, their online courses are also approved by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
So, Dominic, welcome!
Dominic: Thank you, Tom. Nice intro.
Pharma Excipients: Thank you! Let’s start with the interview. How do you do your GMP trainings today?
Dominic: Yes. So today all the training that we do is being done virtually, and that has been the case since September 2020. So everything we do now is done virtually. And the feedback from what we do is very good, and we’re happy with that, and we think we’re going to be doing virtual training at least till the end of this year.
Pharma Excipients: We talked about platforms and softwares. Which platform or software do you use?
Dominic: Yes. So when we first moved to virtual training courses, we did look at a range of platforms that were available. And what I noticed is that certain platforms are fine for meetings but only a few are appropriate for training courses. So we use GoToTraining. There are other platforms as well, but I think it is better to use a platform that has been specifically adapted for running training courses because they have better functionality for the trainers and allow the trainers to control the session a bit better whilst getting delegates to be involved at the same time. So, yeah, we use GoToTraining. Very happy with GoToTraining.
Pharma Excipients: Okay, nice to know! What has changed in comparison to the pre-pandemic times in your area or in your field?
Dominic: Yes. So in the past, people would come to us or we would go to them. So we would run the training courses in a hotel or we would go on-site. Because of the pandemic, travel has been very problematic obviously and so now, with the virtual training courses, people can have their training without the need to travel and that can have financial advantages for an organization as well.
We cover the same material. So what we cover is the same as if it was in a classroom, but how we do it has changed. How we do it has changed, and there are differences with training virtually as opposed to face-to-face training. And one of the main changes we’ve done is the course materials because if it was a classroom-based training course, the tutor is stood up in front of the delegates, and the tutor is moving around, and they’re interacting physically with the delegates. It’s not really possible to do that with a virtual training course.
So for the virtual courses, we’ve made the slides very visual. Lots of pictures. Lots of images. Much less wordy. Much less text on the slides. We have more slides, but we build them up bit by bit because you have to be conscious that people are simply staring at a computer screen and we need to grab their attention and keep their attention. So the design of the course and how we deliver the course has definitely changed by doing it virtually.
Pharma Excipients: Okay. That’s really interesting to know! What would you think is important to know for trainees or companies? What is important to know?
Dominic: It’s important to know how we’re going to do the training and how it’s going to work. A lot of people were initially reticent to do virtual training because we’ve done classroom-based training for decades. People have gone away to do training courses or they’ve gone to the meeting room to attend a training course. And some people were reluctant, but really we’ve had to do it. The worldwide situation has meant that, if you wanted to do training and if you needed to do training, then you would almost certainly have to do it virtually. And so it’s making sure people are ready, that they’re comfortable, that they’re not worried about technology, that they can use their webcam, they don’t have to use their webcam. We just make sure that people in advance have all they need and all they need to know to be ready for the training course.
Pharma Excipients: It’s interesting. What do you think are the advantages of doing the training virtually?
Dominic: Yeah. So there are various advantages. For some training, particularly very practical training, that will have to be done face to face, but there are a lot of advantages of doing things virtually. One advantage is you don’t need to travel. So there are a lot of travel costs that are saved because you haven’t got to go anywhere. And this has been very significant for us for overseas delegates, particularly overseas delegates from the other side of the world where often their travel costs are as much as coming on the training course itself.
And we’ve been running training courses in the UK with a majority of our delegates from European companies, but at the same time, we’ve had delegates from Canada, from the United States, from Singapore, from Australia, from China, from India doing the course in the middle of the night, but they’ve wanted to do the course and they’ve adjusted their lives and their body clocks to allow them to do it. But a lot of these delegates would not have been able to do the course before because the travel costs were prohibitive.
So saving on travel is important and is significant. The other thing we found as well is that they do have the benefit that you can do the training course at work or at home. And a lot of organizations have tried to encourage people working from home where possible, so it does allow that. The other challenge we found is a lot of organizations that we worked for had restrictions on how many people were allowed in a meeting room at any one time. So that became very problematic organizing training courses.
And the other thing as well that we found is there’s quite a lot of flexibility about when the courses are presented because normally our courses would be a day-long or two-day long and it’d be an entire day or two days back to back. But because it’s virtual, we don’t have to do it that way. And if an organization would like us to do a one-day course but in bite-sized chunks, then we can do an hour and a half session on a Monday, and a Tuesday, and a Wednesday, and a Thursday so that we’ll still get the training but it doesn’t interfere as much with the working day. And of course when we do the training is very flexible as well. So there’s quite a lot of flexibility and advantages for doing virtual training.
Pharma Excipients: So you’re saying in our niche, people gain more knowledge through the virtual way because they can attend more courses for the same money as less people before the pandemic times.
Dominic: Yes, that’s correct.
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Pharma Excipients: It’s very interesting.
Dominic: Yes, that’s correct. So we’ve definitely found this that we’ve had delegates that have come on a virtual course that would not have been available to them had it been a classroom-based course not only because of the cost of travel but the time of traveling, the time away from home, and any jetlag you may have if you’ve traveled from the other half of the world as well.
So we definitely have tapped into a wider audience that’s been able to come on our course. And we are doing a course later on in the year for a group of Japanese delegates. We’ll be presenting it in the UK; they will all be in Japan. But in that particular case, they’ll do it from home or at work. We’ll adjust our time of presentation. So we’ll do it very early in the morning in the UK so it’s done in the afternoon Japanese time. So we can be quite flexible about when we do the courses with it being done virtually.
Pharma Excipients: Yes, it sounds like a lot of advantages really for…
Dominic: Yes, and again there was some reticence from people. Even the trainers, even myself was thinking, “Do we want to do this? Is this what people want?” Really people didn’t have any choice unfortunately. We had to go down the virtual route. And I think as long as you can engage with the delegates, you’ve got to keep them engaged because they are in front of their computer and there are lots of other things they could be doing on their computer. So it’s absolutely critical in the design of a course virtually that you engage with the delegates and you keep them engaged and involved throughout the whole course. And there’s a lot of things we can do to help achieve that.
Pharma Excipients: What is working well for the companies, or what do they need to change or keep in mind for a successful GMP training?
Dominic: So with all training courses, particularly in our industry where the subject matter might not be the most interesting subject, you’ve got to make sure that you engage the delegates, that you involve them, that it’s not only an educational experience but it’s a fun learning experience as well. And you want to avoid just simply talking to people all the time. You’ve got to involve people getting them engaged and getting them to do things as well. And certainly when we do the virtual training courses, our aim is to make sure the delegates are doing something every few minutes. Even if it’s just saying yes in chat or no in chat or just saying something, there’s lots we can do virtually. We can have polls. We can have little quizzes. We can test people. But it’s all about making sure they’re engaged.
And we don’t insist on using webcams, but we like people to use webcams where they can. Some people are a bit uncomfortable about that. But if you went on a classroom-based training course, you would see the people in the room. So we’ve tried to use webcams as much as we can, and webcams have the advantage for the trainers because you can see people’s faces to see if they’re engaged with you. If they’re smiling, if they’re nodding, that’s telling you they’re engaged. And it does allow the delegates to see each other as well. So I think webcams, we didn’t think we would use webcams, because we were told actually people don’t want to use webcams. By and large, people are quite happy to use webcams as long as everyone else is using a webcam. So that’s important.
Also, the software we use by the way has a little sneaky feature that it will tell the tutors if the delegates are not on full-screen mode. So if the person is not occupying the full screen, occupying a little bit of the screen, a flag appears. We tell the delegates this as well. We wouldn’t make a fuss about it, but we do get this little flag that this person is doing something else on their computer. But we do tell that to the delegates.
Pharma Excipients: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes people get bored from something and you have just a little look in the news or something. But, yeah, for sure.
Dominic: Correct. Yeah, and you have to think about this in the design of the course and the program. What we cover with virtual training is exactly the same. It’s just how we do it has changed quite dramatically. And you do have to think about every single session that you do is how can I keep the delegates engaged during this session, whether it’s half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half. It’s just trying to keep them engaged. Trying to get the delegates to do things to be involved throughout the sessions and to building breaks as well to give people the opportunity to have a break between sessions on a training course.
Pharma Excipients: Okay, nice to know. And, yeah, I think I can see the problems in the virtual trainings and what you have to look after. Yeah, can you maybe give us a little outlook on the future? What do you think what’s happening after the pandemic or…?
Dominic: Yes. Yeah, that is a difficult one. And the thing about virtual training is that the platforms that we have to present virtual training, or virtual meetings for that matter, are not new. They’ve been around for a long, long time, but we’ve had to go down the route of virtual training or virtual meeting. So we have them now and people are used to them. So that’s good and as far as people are used to doing things virtually, and they’re not necessarily worried about going on a training course virtually because they’re used to doing virtual things in their normal working lives and home lives as well.
Where are we going in the future is difficult to predict? We’re certainly going to run all of our courses virtually till the end of this year, end of 2021. But we are listening and seeing what the customer wants because, at the end of the day, that’s the critical thing. What does the customer want? If people are saying to us that they would like to do this course but they would like to come to a hotel to do it or they would like us to come on site to do it, then we will look into that and see what we can do.
I think going forward there will probably be a mixture of virtual and classroom-based training courses. Definitely, classroom-based courses if the course has a practical element, I have no doubt about that. But maybe there’s some form of hybrid approach where some of the course is virtual and then when you’ve done that, you come to the practical element. So there may be a mixture of this going into next year, but I think there are other things that come into play because financially there are less costs associated with the virtual training course because there’s no travel. And so someone might want to go on a course, but their boss might say, “Yes, you can go on the course but see if there’s a virtual one because it’s cheaper.” So it could be pressure for people to go on virtual courses for financial purposes.
So what we’re going to have to do is to kind of suck it and see and see what we can do and see what’s available. So I would imagine going into 2022, then we’ll be offering both. We’ll probably be offering virtual and classroom with the option to switch if necessary. So I think we’re going to all have to have a flexible approach to how we do our training as providers and as delegates as well for next year, I would think.
Pharma Excipients: Okay. That was really interesting, Dominic. Thank you very much for the interview. I learned a lot. I really learned a lot! And I think you gave us some new insights on how virtual trainings work in pandemic times. And, yeah, maybe something’s changing in the future, too. How you just said, probably the boss will say, “Yeah, do the virtual one, because it’s a little bit cheaper,” maybe. But I think a lot of other people want you to be in-house just because they like it and you have all in front of you. Thank you very much! Do you have anything to say? Do you want to say something?
Dominic: Yeah, thank you, Tom. Yes, I mean, we’ve always gone away to do training courses. We’ve gone away to do them in hotels or we’ve gone to a training room and had training with other colleagues. And that’s what we’ve always had to do. But now I think the positive thing is there’s an option. There’s an option. You can still do that or you can do things virtually. And I think that’s good for the training providers as well as the delegates because they never used to have an option before. You went away to do a training course. Well, you might not want to go away. It might not be practical to go away for everybody, and I think I’m very positive going forward that we all have now a flexible approach to how training is done. And the only sort of negative side of it is we had to have the pandemic really to force us to all try doing things virtually, but I think it does offer a new way of doing training even if it’s not for all of our training for some of our training going forward.
Pharma Excipients: Thank you very much, Dominic Parry, from Inspired Pharma for attending our interview and have a good day.
Dominic: Thank you, Tom. Thank you very much. Lovely to meet you. All the best. Thank you. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye.