Medical Affairs Undergraduate (Internal Medicine) Review

There have been many days when I have had little to do as there is not always work provided. This is mainly due to a big restructure that affected staff and therefore many projects were put on hold. However, Pfizer is a great company to work for and it has been great to get an insight into a global pharma company.

I felt very valued as they often trusted me to make my own judgements on decisions in projects which showed that they trusted and believed in me. Pfizer has a very inclusive culture where everyone's opinion is listened to a valued. I was in a small team which made me feel very welcome.

I would have frequent 1 to 1s with my line manager which would be at least once a week. This allowed me to constantly ask questions about my work and learn more about different projects that I or others were working on. Any time during the week I knew I could ask questions about anything to anyone in my team so I was never left on my own with a problem.

There were many days that I did not have much work and was waiting to be set something else. I could never guarantee a steady stream of tasks so there was never a need to always work at a fast pace as I felt there was a danger that I would finish a task and then have nothing to do.

A reasonable amount of responsibility on a couple of projects which I was able to run and provide recommendations and make decisions for the best interest of the team. However, there were not loads of projects that were like this and I often felt that the projects I led on were understandably not as business critical to others that I was not working on.

Whilst the job has had a limited benefit on my science degree in terms of scientific knowledge, I have learnt many other skills such as communication, managing multiple projects and time management which will be extremely useful going into my final year of university. Also, it has provided many networks that will be beneficial once I have finished uni.

The office that I worked in was very quiet and there were days that the atmosphere was very dead. When it was like this it was not very exciting. When my team was in it felt very relaxed and informal which was nice as you could talk about work and ask questions without worrying about disturbing others.

It was very well organised as they take on many placement students each year so the onboarding/induction process is very slick and informative. We had regular training sessions in activities such as compliance etc to make sure that everyone was up to a particular required standard. My only criticism is that some interns have managers that do not particularly have a clear plan for what tasks they want to give to us so work is very ad hoc.

Pfizer trained us in all the relevant areas that were required, however, I did not feel that in my role there has been that much investment in terms of workplace skills that I can use in the future other than general business skills which I will be able to take forward.

There seem very limited prospects to work there as many of the employees are much older and there do not seem many graduate entry roles. They have a graduate scheme but they only take on 5 graduates each year so it is very competitive. I also think it can be hard to progress without masters/PhDs etc for certain roles.

Yes there was a good social scene between other placement students as there were about 60 so this gave plenty of opportunity to meet other people and do a variety of things depending on interests. There has been no social interactions outside of work for me with colleagues who are not placement students.

It was very expensive as Surrey is an expensive area so rents were very high and the general cost of living was also high. Also, London is an expensive place to socialise as well. It was obviously cheaper than working in central London though so this is an obvious bonus.

The nightlife was ok as the areas most of us lived were reasonably vibrant and because there were lots of placement students it meant that there were good nights out. Also, living close to London meant that there were always clubs/bars that we could go to at the weekends which meant we had a variety of options.

There were not particularly many opportunities other than a couple of clubs like football and running but most people came to work and then just left due to the location of the site which wasn't easily accessible by public transport. There were some opportunities to do volunteering days but I did not get the chance in my department.