by Katarina Thor
Storage of IMP
As you may have noticed, inspectors love to wander—really wander. And one place I was particularly drawn to was the kitchen, home of two important things: the coffee machine…and the refrigerator.
Now, I’ll admit, my visits weren’t driven only by a craving for caffeine. I was equally eager to look at the refrigerator. During several inspections, I came across temperature logs taped to the refrigerators. Curious, right? Why would a kitchen fridge need a detailed temperature log? And even more intriguing, why did the log sheets proudly display different sponsor names?
In one memorable case, there were three logs, three thermometers, and naturally the next question was: If they all show different temperatures…which one are we supposed to trust?
But the real surprise came when I asked if I could take a look inside, the Investigator opened the door and there it was: IMP from different trials, sitting casually on the shelves. When I explained why this was completely inappropriate, his face turned bright red. He quickly apologized and insisted that they only “used the upper shelves for IMP” so no food would drop down and that “different studies had different designated shelves”. Needless to say, that didn’t quite resolve the issue.
Temperature logger
You might think this is ancient history that everyone nowadays uses fancy temperature loggers instead of handwritten logs, but not in all trials and sites.
At this particular site, they kept struggling with soaring temperatures during the summer. It was a tiny clinic with limited space, and they were genuinely baffled about how to fix the issue. Turns out, the solution was almost comically simple: the thermometer was living its best life in the windowsill, basking in bright sunlight, instead of being placed in the cabinet where the IMP was actually stored. So yes, that was an easy fix and mystery solved. Just a bit unfortunate that it had to show up as an inspection finding first.