Three Ways a Ph.D. Prepares Students for a Career in Medical Affairs

A career in Medical affairs is fast emerging as a popular choice for students with advanced degrees in science, pharmacy and medicine. In this post I will highlight certain skills which students pick up during their graduate school days and which are extremely useful in medical affairs roles.

1. Selling an Idea which is backed up by strong scientific evidence and logical reasoning

 When PhD students defend their thesis, what they are basically doing is selling their research. They had an idea and they gathered evidence by doing experiments and now they are trying to sell their idea in front of scientists who are experts in that area. A medical affairs professional is trying to do a similar thing. Imagine that the company you are working for has developed a new drug for treating hypertension which is targeting a completely new pathway which no one knows about. When you are talking about this drug for the first time in front of clinicians, it is similar to a thesis defense. As a medical affairs professional, you are trying to convince the doctors sitting in the audience that the new molecule which your company has developed will help them in providing better treatment to the patient. The clinicians sitting in the audience on the other will be initially skeptical and it is your job to convince them based on the strength of your scientific data and reasoning about the utility of the new molecule.

2. Emotional Intelligence  

Emotional intelligence or emotional quotient is one of the most important qualities required to succeed in medical affairs. It is the ability to control and express one’s emotions. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence are able to handle their interpersonal relationships judiciously. Emotional intelligence is also a quality which Ph.D. students develop during their graduate school days. Particularly if they are unlucky to have a Thesis Advisor from Hell! While I don’t want to go into the details of the different types of thesis advisors, a thesis advisor from hell is typically someone with a bloated ego, narcissist personality, rude, uncaring, and unsympathetic and wreaks havoc with a student’s career.

Completing a Ph.D. thesis with an advisor from hell requires an extremely high level of emotional intelligence on the part of the student. Along with thesis advisors, Ph.D. students also have to navigate the choppy waters of departmental politics, favoritism, unsupportive lab members and hyper-competitive peers. Just think about how many times a fellow student deliberately tried to make you look bad in front of the thesis advisor or the number of times you felt a fellow lab member has tried to sabotage your experiment. If you have experienced all of the above during your Ph.D. days, it is a good thing.

 Readers must be wondering how it can be a good thing to have experienced hell when completing their thesis. The reason is:

 A student who experienced hell during their Ph.D. days and still graduated on time with a strong resume has already developed a high level of emotional intelligence. This person has a control on his emotions and can block out the negative energy and still focus on the task at hand and get the job done. This is a vital trait which someone needs to possess to succeed in medical affairs.

The primary responsibility of medical affairs professional is to interact with leading doctors who serve as Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). It is not necessary that KOLs will receive you warmly every time. Sometimes you might find them rude and condescending. There might also be occasions when you are presenting some new exciting research but your audience of clinicians might look bored and disinterested. As a medical affairs professional, it is extremely important to control your emotions on such occasions and handle the situation smartly and judiciously. Based on my own personal experience as a Ph.D. student, I feel Ph.D. students are put in many such situations during their student days and develop a strong emotional intelligence which is an important transferable skill when they work in medical affairs.

3. KOL Management

As I stated previously, KOL management is very important to succeed in medical affairs. PhD students get a chance to hone their skills in their student days. The pharmacology department at New York Medical College where I completed my Ph.D. department hosts a number of reputable doctors and scientists for seminars. After the seminar, Ph.D. students are given an opportunity to have a round table conference with the speaker where students get a chance to interact with the speaker and talk about their research. I feel that these interactions helped me develop my networking skills when interacting with KOLs. Along with departmental seminars, Ph.D. students also get an opportunity to network with leading scientists and doctors during conferences like Experimental Biology. All this exposure provides them with a strong skill-set when it comes to KOL management.

Hope readers enjoyed this post.