I only knew one Medical Science Liaison until I became one myself. She had completed a fellowship in pharmacovigilance after we graduated pharmacy school and then moved into the MSL role a year later. I had never fully understood what she did for work, except that she seemed to be out of town a lot.

Then, in October 2018, after having worked two years in retail pharmacy and five years in managed care as a PharmD, a mid-sized pharma company approached me to ask if I’d join them as a medical science liaison (MSL). Without any prior medical science liaison experience, their inquiry was surprising. I thought, “They must be asking everyone; this couldn’t be a serious inquiry. What does a medical science liaison even do and why do they want me for the job?”

Lesson 1: You’re Always Being Interviewed

A good lesson to keep in mind is that you are always being interviewed when you’re in the professional space. I had several encounters with this company while I was on the managed care side, and from those encounters, they assessed the knowledge I could bring to the table along with the ever-elusive soft skills that led to the job offer. Here I am now, almost two full years in my medical science liaison position and I feel like I just got the hang of my role. Let me give you a glimpse into what it took to gain the confidence I have today, especially starting out as a medical science liaison without any prior experience.

I quickly learned that I had made an impression on them via the interactions I had with the company during professional organization meetings.

Lesson 2: Not Every KOL Meeting Will Go Well

Going into a new field will always have its challenges and it will take time to get acclimated to any new position, which can be stressful. I interpret that as the good kind of stress that drives you to grow. I’m the type of person who has an internal drive to be the best at what I do, and perhaps I overestimated how quickly I would be able to adapt to the medical science liaison role.

As soon as I started the job, I dove right into reading all of our pre-clinical and registry trials. This task felt painstakingly slow as I had to re-learn all of the terminology used in scientific publications. But I did it because I wanted to be an expert on the data immediately. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be an example for others who had little to no prior medical science liaison experience and break into the industry. The only thing I knew thus far about my job, was that I would meet with highly influential doctors in specialized fields to discuss the data on our products. I needed to make sure I could stand toe-to-toe with these specialists.

I was told I would get a few meetings from the sales team to start me off. As for the other meetings, I would have to try to reach out to KOLs based on a list from a previous medical science liaison. Here I was, eager and excited to try something new and hope I would be well-received. Well, not every meeting is going to be a “win.” My second meeting with a key opinion leader (KOL) was short – very short. The doctor wanted to know if we had any trials he could be a part of. Unfortunately, I had not been exposed to that part of my job yet. So I had to say I would look into it and then was politely given a handshake and shown the door. While this was a little discouraging, it gave me the drive to learn about our clinical trials and meet the team in charge. I felt far more equipped by our next meeting and it did, in fact, go a lot smoother. A key lesson learned here was to not take rejection personally.

Lesson 3: Active Listening is Critical

My third meeting with a KOL, about two weeks into being in the field, exposed me to a whirlwind of scientific questions ranging from the mechanism of action to the assays used in pre-clinical studies. While I didn’t have all of the answers, I brought many of the questions back to my team and learned that this is called bringing back “insights.” Insights help the company get a read on how their data is being received and allows them to form medical strategies, among other things. Needless to say, this was a “win” with my company. To me, this demonstrated the importance of active listening and taking detailed notes.

After about six months of meetings and hearing various questions, I felt like a true expert on our data. I was easily able to give presentations at universities with 30+ specialists in the room and was able to answer all of the questions that came my way. This felt great, but this was just a portion of my job. I later became involved with investigator-initiated trials, creating presentation slide decks with the medical information team, providing training to cross-functional teams, and performing weekly PubMed searches to stay up to date on the latest evidence.

Becoming a Board Certified Medical Affairs Specialist

Then finally, the pandemic hit, and while meetings were slow, I was able to complete the board certification for medical affairs specialists (BCMAS), which gave me a better understanding of what my colleagues in the home office were working on and reassured me that I was doing everything I could in my role as a medical science liaison. Simply put, being an MSL is a multi-faceted, uniquely challenging role that keeps you on your toes and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it. Learn more about how board certified medical affairs specialists are moving the industry forward.

Erin Duffy, PharmD is Medical Science Liaison at Merz Therapeutics.