What’s it like to work at Pure Drug Safety – Rose’s view

We had the pleasure of welcoming two interns to work with us this summer at Pure Drug Safety. However, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, we had to establish some very different working practices to keep everyone safe.

Despite never actually being able to meet the interns and welcome them physically into our offices at PDS, they very quickly became part of our team. Their enthusiasm and dedication was a delight and we wish them all the very best in their continuing studies and future chosen careers.

In the first of two blog posts, here is Rose’s view on working with Pure Drug Safety this summer. We hope you enjoy reading it.

~ Carol Kingstone

Rose’s experiences

Rose Williams

My name is Rose and I have been working as a summer intern for Pure Drug Safety for 5 weeks. I am studying Pharmacology at Newcastle University, and am about to go into my third year. Our internship was originally cancelled due to coronavirus, but Carol was very understanding and we worked out a way that we could still work for the company, just from home. We did all of our meetings over zoom and had frequent catch-ups with Carol to see how we were getting on.

Working for PDS has been such a great opportunity for me, opening my eyes to a part of the pharmaceutical industry that I didn’t really know much about. When starting my internship with PDS, I didn’t know what side of pharmaceuticals I wanted to go into after uni. Working for the company has given me a much greater understanding of the safety side of drug development. It is definitely something I will consider going into in the future, as I have really enjoyed it.

We were set a few little projects in the first week, to help us settle in and get a feel for the company. After that, our main project was to set up a spread sheet of potential clients for PDS to get in contact with, I felt like we were always kept busy and Carol was always a text message away if we needed any help. I really enjoyed this project as I felt the company was really benefiting from what we were doing, which made it much more worthwhile.

We also got the opportunity to work with Liselle in the marketing department, to give our input on changes being made to the website. I really enjoyed this as marketing is not something I have really looked into before. We have been lucky that we have got to do lots of different things for PDS, so every day has felt different and it has never been boring.

Alongside our main project, we have been editing the newsletter to make it look more up-to-date and fit in with the company. We have also written a few of our own articles about recent topics in the news which we have found interesting. It has been really helpful to have this to do as well, so we can swap between tasks easily.

PDS has given me the opportunity to enhance my understanding of pharmacovigilance, something I feel I will really benefit from in my final year of Uni, and when I get a job afterwards.