New Year, Update on the New Career

Here it is, January 2024. It was a little over two years ago that I left clinical medicine for industry. It’s fair to do a little look-back and assess how it’s been: Just to recap, It was in April 2021 that I had an epiphany. Clinical medicine had become impossible. It was no longer feasible to practice primary care well or even safely, and trying was increasingly incompatible with family life. I’m far from the first physician to come to this conclusion, and as such my December 2021 posts about how I quit and found a nonclinical job at an area immuno-oncology biotechnology company resonated with others at KevinMD and MedPageToday. Many clinical colleagues reached out and asked me for advice on how they could leave too. So in January 2022 I wrote a career shift advice post about my experience that’s also been very popular. 

So, it’s time for an update. Big picture: I’m happy, I’m thriving. Details: I had originally been hired in a communications role for our Medical Affairs team. But then an opportunity to switch over to clinical trial medical monitoring on our Clinical Development team (i.e. Clin Dev) came up, and I jumped at that. This is what I tell my colleagues in practice who reach out for advice: If you’re going to go to biopharma, really consider starting off as a medical monitor. It’s the best way to super-efficiently learn what industry is all about, because it all boils down to the trials. That’s where the most promising developments are tested, where lab science meets the human body under intense observation and in a tightly regulated environment. (I wrote a post about the basic responsibilities of a medical monitor in May 2022, if anyone is curious.) I started on just one trial, and really enjoyed the work from the get-go. Basically, it’s as close as you can get to patient care, while still working for industry. It’s the medical monitor who directly interacts with the investigators (i.e., the oncologists managing the patients), to discuss things like trial eligibility, medication dosing, management of side effects, and (the absolute best) efficacy. It’s amazing to be among the first to hear when a patient’s tumor is shrinking and they’re able to get off of their opioid pain meds or get back to Peloton. And, many of these specialists are leaders in their field, the ones who author key publications and treatment guidelines, the ones who patients travel far to see for a second opinion. I get a little fan-girly sometimes. 

I was very thankful to have excellent mentors and team members when I made the shift, and I learned fast. Which is good, because in March 2023, a need came up for an MD to oversee numerous trials and take on additional responsibilities, which I again jumped at, and so I became a Medical Director in Clin Dev. Then just last month I was promoted again, to Senior Medical Director. It’s been a crazy steep learning curve, but also intellectually stimulating and life choice-validating. 

How life choice-validating? When I was interviewing for industry jobs, it was so important to me that whatever role I took allowed me to become part of something positive and potentially impactful on a large scale. The whole concept of immuno-oncology just screamed “this is a big deal!” to me. Think about it– drugs that can stimulate the body’s own immune system to fight and sometimes even beat cancer? As in, potentially cure cancer? I was like, Sign me up. That’s about as cool as it gets. 

I can now safely say that this job has met my expectations, as we publish more and more and more and soon-to-be more data showing that what we’re developing works better than what is currently available for the majority of patients with colorectal cancer. It’s exciting stuff. And that’s just with colorectal cancer– we’ve published data in several other cancers as well. But I won’t geek out about it here. 
And I know, anyone who looks us up will see the stock price and be like, Whaaa? And I get that. The entire biotechnology sector has been hit hard these past two years. 2023 articles use terms like “a challenging economic environment” leading to “a bleak year” and “an ongoing sector-wide slump” leading to “dramatically underperforming stocks”. But 2024 is predicted to be better, as “the tide is starting to change” and we may be heading into “a more amenable environment for biotech”. I’m not worried. It’s not about the stocks. It’s about being on the team that can offer the world some game-changing treatments, in a job I can really get into and do well, with a hybrid workweek and manageable schedule as a bonus. The point is, the career shift to this particular role was a good decision for me, and I look forward to the year ahead regardless.