Pharmaceutical medicine for doctors

What opportunities are there?

There are many roles in the pharmaceutical industry that a medical graduate could consider. These include:

• research and development
• quality assurance [1]
• consultancy
• managing clinical trials
• medical sales
• marketing and branding
• general management

Medical affairs

If you are a doctor with a number of years’ experience, you could consider working in medical affairs. This involves the later stages of development and marketing of a drug or medical product. You would use your clinical and technical understanding to provide product information to internal marketing teams, external customers and medical authorities.

You can find more information about pharmaceutical medicine on the specialty pages [2].

• Getting in

  • it is possible to move into many of the above roles at any stage of your medical career, including during undergraduate studies
  • for medical affairs you will need some research experience, knowledge of regulatory affairs and would usually need to be a member of a Royal College
  • there are good opportunities for career progression, moving between companies, contract research organisations, consultancies and other agencies

• Further information

  • British Association of Pharmaceutical Physicians [3]
  • Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine [4]
  • The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) [5] – includes a list of member companies
  • ABPI Careers Website [6]
  • BMJ Careers [7]
  • Only medics recruitment agency [8]– a specialist medical recruitment company that recruits pharmaceutical physicians for pharmaceutical companies
  • emedcareers.com [9] – includes medical affairs vacancies
  • Wiley Job Network: pharmaceutical vacancies [10]