Graduate Students: Preparing for a Successful Career in Medical Affairs

A career in medical affairs can be a very fulfilling one for people with advanced degrees in science and medicine who have an outgoing personality and enjoy peer-to-peer interaction to discuss complex scientific principals and drugs. For PhD. students who are skilled at effectively explaining their research during conferences and meetings, a career in medical affairs is a good place to apply those skills. In this post, I want to put forth my point of view on how students can prepare for a successful career in medical affairs during their student days. Although this post mainly based on my experiences as a medical student in India and as a PhD. student in the US, the points in this post are applicable to all doctors, scientists and pharmacists who are looking to break into medical affairs.

What is Medical Affairs?

Broadly speaking, medical affairs is the department of a pharmaceutical company which handles all the scientific communication and interactions with health care providers. These interactions can be in the form of providing research grants to carry out some studies with the drugs the company is developing or it can be during a medical meeting where the medical affairs professional provides updated and authentic information on the company’s existing or research products. Some companies have their clinical research teams as a part of the medical affairs team. In this case the medical affairs team is also involved in the various clinical research activities. In majority of the cases, the clinical research and medical affairs teams are separate. The medical affairs team is generally involved with drugs which are already marketed or with molecules which are in late clinical development and about to get marketed within 1-2 years. One important thing to note is that medical affairs department is not responsible for driving any commercial activities. They are responsible for driving only the scientific and medical activities which are aimed at enhancing the medical and scientific knowledge of the health care providers regarding the company’s products

A deep scientific knowledge, high emotional intelligence and excellent presentation skills are some of the important traits which are required by a person working in medical affairs. In today’s scenario, most of the people working in medical affairs have a D degree (i.e PhD. PharmD, M.D., or an M.D. PhD.). However just having a D degree is not enough. As I mentioned previously, it is also important to have excellent presentation skills. Medical students and PhD.students can hone their presentation skills during conference presentations, research seminars and journal clubs. I got some experience in doing scientific presentations in India during my medical school days. However the real chance I had to hone my presentation skills came during my time as a PhD. student when I got the opportunity to present in departmental journal clubs, conferences and research colloquiums. One piece of advice which I would like to give all students especially PhD. students who present papers during journal clubs is to try and present papers which are out of your comfort zone and have more clinical applications. Think of it this way. As medical affairs professionals, you will be presenting data on the molecule which your company is developing in front of doctors who will be using that molecule in the future. In such a scenario, your aim is share data which will explain how the molecule is targeting a particular biochemical pathway to produce meaningful clinical outcomes. Presenting papers with more clinically relevant research during journal clubs will be very helpful. In my present job as a medical affairs manager, I serve as a speaker at CME events and other medical events where I interact with clinicians and discuss new updates and research. The practice which I got presenting research papers during journal clubs and other meetings during my student days has proved to be of immense help for me in my current job.

Some useful resources to which I found useful to learn more about medical affairs were:

·        The Medical Science Liaison Career Guide: How to Break into Your First Role by Samuel Dyer. It is a well written book which gives some nice insights about field medical affairs. It is available on amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Science-Liaison-CareerGuide/dp/0989962601). 

·        LinkedIn Groups – There are many medical affairs groups on LinkedIn like medical science liaison society, medical science liaison and medical affairs networkers. These are good places to network with other medical affairs professionals and learn from their experiences.

• http://www.themsls.org/- This is the website for the Medical Science Liaison Society

In my next post, I will focus on the important traits which are required to succeed in medical affairs