Pharmacist to Physician to Pharmacovigilance
Dr. Marcy Powell is an OB/GYN that is passionate about women’s health and reproductive care. This came through loud and clear throughout our blog interview!
Marcy entered medicine after first becoming a pharmacist. She worked in both retail and hospital pharmacies and decided to go back to medical school to add the missing pieces of medical diagnosis and decision-making regarding treatments. Her initial plan was to be a pediatrician but she changed paths during her OB rotation where she found her calling.
After six years in private practice, the 80+ hour work week (and she was careful to clarify that this was actual work away from home; the hours of charting were in addition to this!) was impacting her ability to advocate for her family in the way she chose. She did not want to leave medicine because she did not enjoy it; instead, she needed an alternate path to provide balance for her family.
Her husband, also a pharmacist, worked in pharmacovigilance at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and encouraged her to consider the pharma industry as an option. He coached her through the process and helped her prepare for interviews. Given this preparation, she went in feeling confident in her capabilities to add value to GSK. He also knew of physicians that were still doing some clinical practice while still working in pharma and that was appealing to Marcy.
“The industry role allowed me to use both my pharmacy and MD background together to help a larger number of people than I can individually while seeing patients”
In the Pharmacovigilance group, she was not guaranteed to work on any specific programs when she joined; however, GSK was working on a drug for pre-term labor (PTL) and she was excited to potentially contribute to that. In fact, she was the only OB/GYN at GSK at the time and was ultimately assigned that development program as one of her responsibilities. This was an “amazing experience” because the entire development team involved her in not just safety. Her expertise led to being involved in input on multiple levels; allowing her to quickly gain an understanding of the entire matrix team together vs only the safety role.
Marcy’s passion for women’s health again came through as we were discussing her pride in working for a company that focuses on women’s health. She highlighted the lack of research related to women’s health and reproductive health issues. This drive opened other opportunities for her at GSK. She is the Pregnancy Outcomes Advisory Chair where she leads a team that focuses on any questions related to women and clinical trials including contraception, pregnancy, epidemiology related questions and risk mitigation related to women in trials, etc. She is the GSK internal resource for any team to consult on these topics. Part of the responsibility in this role is to stay current on both regulatory and internal guidances and standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to pregnancy and contraception.
In PVG, Marcy started as a Director and was promoted to Senior Director over the course of a 10-year career at GSK. She has had opportunities to become a team leader but counsels people to “know their strengths and weakness”. She enjoys being an individual contributor and recognizes that the administrative piece of being a group leader is not as exciting to her as her current work.
When she described her work in PVG it includes working on the “development” side with products that are either in clinical development or up to approximately 5 years post-marketed. She evaluates protocols from a safety perspective, insuring incorporation of appropriate safety data collection and monitoring. She creates Risk Mitigation Plans (RMPs) that are based upon the compound’s mechanism of action (MOA), toxicities or events identified in non-clinical development and ongoing clinical safety data. Signal detection is another responsibility where she is evaluating safety data to understand if there is a newly identified safety issue that needs to communicated to patients and prescribers, either via a label change or letters to prescribers or both.
On the transition to pharma she describes it as I’ve heard many physicians do:
“It’s like being an intern again with new acronyms to learn. At the end of the first year, I started putting all the pieces together and really understanding”
Marcy provided her pertinent advice for those evaluating their career options in pharma:
- talk to people in the roles you are considering and really understand the benefits of clinical medicine and industry
- understand how your clinical skills translate and communicate clearly
- have confidence in your interviews
- realize that the job may not be 40 hours per week, some weeks may be less busy and others will be much busier BUT there is so much more flexibility and predictability
- when negotiating apply the following thought: “what do you have to lose, you’ve already been offered the job!” (her husband taught her this and she received a sign-on bonus to help cover some expenses she would incur in leaving clinical medicine!)
- earning potential over time is greater – salary annual increases and merit increases, bonuses, equity AND the opportunity for promotions (with salary increases) that aren’t available in private practice