Student Medical Writing and Pharmacovigilance Assistant Review

Uploading serious adverse event forms onto a database and following up with the hospital; analysing safety information; attending meetings and taking minutes; helping with the preparation, review and authoring of clinical trial documents; reading and keeping up with projects across the whole organisation; organising fundraising events and socials; completing courses through an online learning platform. You can also attend seminars both virtually and in-person.

This placement has helped me develop my planning and organisation skills as I have helped organise fundraising events for the charity and have had to meet deadlines when it comes to completing certain tasks. Working across two teams meant that I had to balance my workload accordingly and as many of the documents require more than one person working on them, I have improved my teamwork skills massively!

Yes! While my first 2-3 months were dedicated to training, once I completed this I was surprised by the amount of responsibility I was given. I worked with patient information and uploaded this onto a specific database as well as writing documents which would be published or sent to regulatory agencies. As a team, we check each others work before it is finalised so I was confident when I sent it off.

Since I worked across two teams, I had two great line managers to support and help me with everything I needed. We had one to one sessions every couple weeks just to make sure I was on track and to have time to discuss anything that was worrying me. A lot of placement students return to work for CRUK after completing their degree so there were lots of people who could relate to being a placement student and had great advice!

Everyone was extremely friendly, nice and willing to help. I was encouraged to ask questions and seek help if I needed it. The team really helped me feel included from the start. I met some people that had very important roles in the company and they were just as friendly and down to earth as everyone one else. Since so many people work on a given project everyone is closely knit and you get to know a wide variety of people.

I really enjoyed my placement. I got involved in lots of activities and events that I would not have had the opportunity to be involved with if I was not doing a placement year. It gave me time to reflect on what I wanted to do next. I also got to meet lots of people who had been in many different scientific fields and who shared their experienced and advice with me. I have definitely got a lot more experience than when I started and I am a lot more confident because of it.

Yes

Be yourself, be friendly and just remember that being enthusiastic and willing to learn sometimes counts more than having all the skills (as these can be taught)! From a technical point, I think one of the things that helped me was to read about some of their current projects and have a basic understanding of the way clinical trials work - this does not have to be extensive as they will teach you everything you need to know but it is useful to have a basic understanding of the work the CDD does within Cancer Research UK.