Making the Transition to a Career in the Pharmaceutical Industry
This is the second blog post from my interview with Dr. Karla Loken. Karla is an obstetrician/gynecologist and has held two different roles in the pharmaceutical industry. She transitioned to the pharmaceutical industry (“the industry”) about 3 years ago. Currently, her title is Head of Clinical Development, Gynecologic Surgery Division at Hologic, Inc.
Read more about Karla’s background and the story of her transition to “industry”
Being a physician in “industry” for fifteen years I have received a lot of questions about the transition:
- How did I deal with not seeing patients any longer?
- What is it like dealing with the business side?
- What exactly do you do? (especially from my family!)
And I asked myself… what will my physician colleagues think about me transitioning to pharma?
You may have heard pharma referred to as the “dark side”? I certainly have – Karla and I spoke about her experience with the pharmaceutical industry prior to deciding to apply for her first role at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis…
Karla had experience with Pfizer that influenced her opinion that pharma is not the dark side:
At the time the HPV vaccine was a “hot topic” Karla stepped up to lend her medical voice as a
member of the Vaccine Coalition of Indiana. On this committee, she also had the opportunity to be involved with vaccines for meningitis.
This was personal for Karla.
Meningitis killed her sister when she was a teenager. Karla partnered with Pfizer regarding their meningitis B vaccine on non-branded webinars and other speaking events and her family did a commercial for the vaccine. She and her parents also had the opportunity to attend “give back day” at Pfizer where they met researchers involved in the development of the vaccine.
For her parents it was
“the single most healing thing to meet the researchers who never gave up”.
This story really resonated with me as I think of the numerous colleagues I’ve worked with over the years that are patient-focused and strive to do the right thing to bring new therapies to patients.
Karla’s experience prior to joining pharma already gave her the mindset that the pharmaceutical industry was not the “dark side”. Although there is plenty of negative press to read about the “industry” there are amazing stories about how this industry helps people as well.
Another of the many interesting observations Karla had was about
reaction time:
As a gynecologist, I’m “very quick to react – used to being on floor – dealing with emergency”
But now …
reminding myself “oh, I can take some time to look something up first; or ok to say I don’t have that answer right now – no one is bleeding out on the table – you have time to process – a little harder to slow the wheels down”
Taking time to formulate a response, whether in a meeting or an email, is important. You may not always want to be the first person in the room to respond. As physicians, we are used to dealing with emergencies; in pharma, there are rarely emergencies and taking some time to be thoughtful in your response helps to avoid mistakes or avoid being seen as reactive.
If you are transitioning from clinical medicine into a non-clinical career,
take this learning from Karla and apply it early on in your career!
“We can learn something new anytime we believe we can”
~~ Virginia Satir, American Author
I’d like to sincerely thank Karla for sharing her insights into her pharma career.