Clinician
Pfizer

Nandini C

0.00.00 My name is Nandini C and I work as a Clinician at Pfizer. So as a Clinician I’m a medically qualified doctor and I also have a PhD in biochemistry, although you don’t need to have the PhD in order to do the job. I’m involved in helping to develop new medicines for patients. So I can be involved in the design of clinical studies, monitoring the results, making sure that the drug is safe and that it’s working properly in patients.

0.00.30  At school my grades were actually quite mediocre. I certainly wasn’t one of these star students. And for the most parts my teachers weren’t particularly interested in me. In fact when I went for my careers advice my careers advisor suggested to me that I should stop school at 16 and just not bother to study any hard subjects.

0.01.00 So of course that did make me question my own belief in myself, so that was probably the first obstacle that I had to overcome. Most of my time than anything else, I actually did apply to study a science degree at university and still because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, but I knew that I liked science and I passed my A levels to the surprise of my teachers and did actually go on and complete my degree. I moved back actually and lived with my parents for a year, worked in a toy factory,

0.01.30 and saved up some money and then went back to school and took a Masters degree in biochemistry in London and after a year I knew pretty much then that I wanted to do a PhD, so I then continued with my further education and did a PhD. After I’d finished my PhD and got that under my belt I felt like I wanted to see a bit more of world and having a PhD is lucky in that researchcan take you to many different labs all over the world.

0.02.00 So I applied for a research position as a post-doctoral research fellow in a lab in Montreal in Canada. Moving away from home and actually relocating to a completely different country is an amazing experience. I would recommend that to anybody if they have that opportunity. You certainly learn a lot about yourself, having to manage things on your own, you don’t have that support network that you have back in the UK.

0.02.30 You meet some incredible people and I got to learn, I learnt to speak French fluently for example when I was there and also learned to play ice hockey, somewhat badly but I can get around a skating rink, and even scored a goal, so that was a great experience. After I’d finished my post-doctoral research and decided that I wanted to do something more immediately applicable

0.03.00 or relevant to people and to society, so at that point I applied to medical school and that led me on of course to do my training and qualify as a doctor and that allowed me to actually combine all of the different parts, things that I’m interested in just normally actually into a career and into a job and then that’s led me to my current position as a Clinician.

0.03.30 My family were very supportive so they provided me I think with a fantastic basis of a loving environment and obviously their belief in me helped me to believe in myself as well. But obviously they weren’t in a position financially to support me so, you know, that had to come from me. But certainly they provided me with a very good family life and also instilled me the importance of a good education.

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