A junior doctor’s first taste of pharmaceutical medicine

During my time at Boyd Consultants, I was able to learn about the pharmaceutical industry through a variety of different lenses, and get a real insight into the industry’s role in modern-day healthcare. A significant proportion of my time was spent meeting with various senior executives in the company, including members of the Product Development team, the Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC) team and the Medical Monitoring team. Seeing these smaller groups come together to achieve a greater outcome was fascinating and reflected the foundational importance of teamwork within the pharmaceutical industry.

I was also fortunate enough to speak to a current Pharmaceutical Medicine trainee, where I gained a much deeper appreciation for the role of doctors within the industry. Prior to this, I did not realise how varied this role could be, from working for a Contract Research Organisation as an investigator, to aiding medical monitoring in clinical trials or even developing a novel therapeutic product themselves. A key learning point that I gained from this week is that a career in pharmaceutical medicine is limitlessly varied!

In addition, Professor Boyd had very kindly arranged for me to spend a day at a Phase 1 clinical trial unit in South Manchester. It was truly intriguing for me to see the inner workings of First-in-Human studies, including the types of data collected on each participant, how this data is analysed and how volunteer and patient safety is maintained at all times. I was also fortunate enough to receive one-to-one teaching from Professor Boyd himself (whenever our schedules permitted!). During these sessions we covered a variety of topics, including an overview of the drug development process, how to analyse adverse events, how to interpret different regulatory documents and even some important lessons when it comes to running your own business.

Overall, I have had a tremendous experience during my week at Boyds! The team there had a huge wealth of experience, were passionate about their work and were keen to teach future generations of pharmacologists and drug developers. Seeing the global impact that the pharmaceutical industry has on healthcare has further inspired me to think about joining one day. Particular fields that caught my attention during my work experience included gene-therapy, novel surgical devices and the field of healthcare economics.

I would like to specifically thank Professor Boyd for organising this work experience, for teaching me about the industry and for providing me with the opportunity to explore the different angles of drug development. I would encourage any student interested in the pharmaceutical industry to reach out and gain some real-life experience – it really could be a career-altering moment.