Pharmacovigilance: A Great Career option for Pharmacy Graduates
Many drugs are withdrawn from or not even brought into the market by Pharmacovigilance. It is mainly due to the function of Pharmacovigilance professionals that the medicines in the marketplace that we consume are generally safe and all those that are identified hazardous are taken off the market. Pharmacovigilance professionals keep a timely watch on the safety of the medicines in clinical trials as well as the medicines previously being marketed in the market.
Aim and objectives of Pharmacovigilance:
- The main purpose of pharmacovigilance is to improve the patient’s safety and enhance his care in terms of the use of medicines, including paramedical interventions.
- Pharmacovigilance also supports public health programs by providing reliable information for the efficient assessment of the risk-benefit profile of medicines.
- Contribute to the assessment of benefits, uses, side effects, harm, effectiveness, and risk of medicines.
- Encouraging the safe, rational, and more effective (including cost-effective) use of various medicines.
- support education, understanding, and clinical training in pharmacovigilance and its effective availability to the public.
How do they work?
When the side effect of drugs are reported, the Pharmacovigilance professionals enter the event inappropriate databases, follow-up with the event to collect additional information and send these reports to regulatory authorities and other appropriate regulatory bodies.
Main activities or job responsibilities of Pharmacovigilance professionals:
- Recording and reporting adverse reactions received from healthcare professionals and consumers, in case of creation, reviewing for minimum safety information (MIS).
- Conducting in-depth interviews with patients and healthcare professionals
- Developing a thorough knowledge of products by reconciliation and follow up approach
- Data entry of all details readily available into the safety database,
- Completing periodic safety update reports on drugs and other treatments
- Writing and reviewing serious adverse effects reports and forms.
- flagging up early warning signs of adverse effects of drugs
- Minimizing the risk of serious side effects
- Completing safety audits
- Working on clinical trials of new drug
Opportunities for Pharmacovigilance Professionals?
People trained in Pharmacovigilance can find excellent employment options in the following organizations:
- Pharmaceutical & Biotech companies.
- Contract Research Organizations (CROs)
- Regulatory Authorities such as FDA
- Clinical Research Organizations.
- Pharmacovigilance units in Medical colleges & Hospitals
- Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPOs) such as Accenture, Cognizant.
Job Prospects:
The initial remuneration for freshers is significantly based on their academic background, differing from year to year as well as from an organization to an organization.
- At a fresher level, employment for pharmacy or life science graduate is Drug Safety Associate. They are primarily engaged in the case of creation, reviewing for minimum safety information (MIS).
- After 2-3 years of experience in that position and builds the required skill sets (Medical coding, narrative and scientific writing, a good understanding of medical terms and a basic understanding of regulatory affairs, ICH-GCP and compliance, etc) he can go on to become a DSS (Drug Safety Scientist).
- Individuals once having acquired a good narrative writing experience can pursue it on a larger frame, moving from individual cases like writing for PSUR(Periodic Safety Update Report) and PADER(Periodic Adverse Drug Experience Reports) and as well as becoming an Aggregate report scientist.
- With an overall of 7-10 years, experience in this position individuals can easily become a Team Lead or Team manager based on the company.
- Lastly, individuals end up acquiring the position of a Director or Vice-President with an experience of 9-10 years.
Average Pay-scale (Annual), Based on Indeed.com salary
- Fresher: 80,000 -120,000 USD
- After 5 years: 135,000 – 160,000 USD
- After 10 years: 180,000 and above
Conclusions: Pharmacovigilance is a great employment option for pharmacy, medical, and life science graduates. The main aim of Pharmacovigilance is to provide complete and clear information related to drug safety and various risks and benefits associated with them. Pharmacovigilance can help in providing information on unintended and severe adverse events that could not be provided by clinical trials involving the in-vivo method. There are large numbers of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries working in this sector. A pharmacy graduate directly joins this profession, if a person wants to strengthen his/her resume, there are specialized courses available like Certification course in Advanced Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance to grab good opportunities.
For more details on enrolling in this course,
Please visit
https://www.medipharmsolutions.com/drug-safety-associate-and-pharmacovigilance-training/
