Moving from retail to industry: a letter to all pharmacists

Moving from retail to industry: a letter to all pharmacists

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Date:- 2018-03-15 00:00:00

Dear pharmacists,

The decision to leave community pharmacy and join the industry is the most and challenging task for young pharmacists. Any pharmacy allows profitability and promotions to be worked there and maintains the accessible career growth for future reference.

Industrial Pharmacists are mainly involved in the research, design, and development and testing of new medicines and treatments, ensuring their safety and quality. 

Want to be part of a team responsible for creating and marketing a medicine that helps millions of people all over the world?

 Industrial pharmacists work in companies that essentially manufacture medicines, however they are involved in different stages of this process, from initial design to public launch and sales. 

Although many pharmacists start off their careers in industry in a laboratory based role, the areas that pharmacists work in include many non lab roles. For example in Medicines Information, Regulatory Affairs, Marketing and Business Development.

Industrial pharmacy can be an extremely rewarding career path and can lead to managerial positions or other positions that are not traditionally associated with pharmacy within the same company. 

A role which involves many different skills is that of a Qualified Person (QP). Here you are responsible for releasing product for supply to the market and confirming that it has been made and tested to the required quality standards in line with the registered methods and processes. Roles in Quality Assurance can involve overseas travel to either other locations in your own company or to the sites of suppliers. Exploring careers in industry and come across regulatory affairs. This profession involves teams of people who utilize science, regulatory and business skills to get medicines from the production line and bring them to the market. It is the time to reflect and gain perspective career.

 

Here, I am briefing a short tale of a growing young pharmacist’s journey in career path.

Graduating from pharmacy, I undertook a pre-registration training programme with the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry in product research and development. I was involved in drug formulation and it was exciting and rewarding to work as part of a multidisciplinary team of chemists, statisticians and other pharmacists. I also began to see the variety of career paths. Pharmacists were well placed to peruse within the industry – such as manufacturing, drug development, commercial sales and marketing roles and regulatory affairs. I wanted a career that would allow me to benefit patients, provide me with diversity in my role and enable me to apply my skills and knowledge to further challenge and develop myself.

Progressing from this role, I am now a Scientific Advisor in the vaccines medical affairs division. It is immensely rewarding to work towards continually improving public health, whilst also bringing value to the business.

As pharmacists, require to set a unique set of valuable skills and competition is increased that are facing challenges by time and exploring alternative career paths in pharmaceutical industry.

 

Best Wishes To All Of You!

Mukesh