Doctor's Crossing Podcast Spark-notes: Drug Safety
Job: Drug Safety/Phamaco-vigilance
Person on Podcast: Dr. Ruth Namuyinga
Job She Was in Prior to Career Switch: Board Certified Preventative Medicine Physician and Epidemiologist, Trained in Uganda as physician, CDC Epidemiology fellowship
What Do You Do?:
- Understand terminology, regulations in country and globally
- Part of team of researchers, scientists, health authorities, regulators to deliver safe medications to patients
- Can work on safety of products in development and already on the market
- If in development, look at animal studies and human studies for safety
- In already on market, can assess for adverse events. Can still look at clinical trials to assess adverse events also.
- Great work-life balance. No work after shift.
For Example:
Evaluation of case is similar to evaluation of patient coming into clinic. Patient comes in, get symptoms, P.E., labs, imaging, then differential diagnosis. Case comes in over report of event, want to know how soon did the event occur, what other medications were they taking, whats their PMH, were they hospitalized, did they respond to treatment, was their suspect drug discontinued, did they restart meds, and did the events recur. Similar to getting really good history. There are systems in place to get more history if there is insufficient data.
How to Prepare to be a Great Candidate:
- Can come in as fellowships in entry level positions for physicians, so they can rotate within areas within drug safety. After 1-2 years, if they like then we can choose which area we want to stay in for a full time job.
- Can be Foreign medical grad and not certified in US. Any specialty.
- Prior hx of vaccine program work or working in World Health Organization
- Co-author in a paper
- Research experience
- Look for jobs on Glassdoor, Indeed, Linkedin. Try company's website and apply directly
- Change CV to Resume
Compensation:
Range 175-300k. average 220-240k. Bonus with stock options. If you go higher, can be compensated 300k-400k.
Resource:
- Insider Guide to entry area through pharmacy: www.doctorscrossing.com/pharma