Growing up together as a team with respect to personal capability

Medical representative

2017—Entered the Company after graduating from a pharmaceutical school

A job contributing to health by getting involved with many people felt attractive.

The pharmaceutical industry was a familiar industry learning at a pharmaceutical school. I was thinking to be a pharmacist first, but through knowing broader jobs, I felt being a medical representative (MR) could be interesting. The chance to know about MR was when a person from our company came and talked at class. I thought the job is very attractive by knowing the contribution to medical needs and feeling it as a rewarded job. Especially, making contribution to people’s health by knowing the needs of medical staff and patients attracted me.

I was assigned to a sales office covering about 100 practitioners after six months of training about our products and basis working as a MR after joining the company.The day-to-day activity is to visit clinics and pharmacies and provide information about our products. And I tried to make 10 visits per day. Also, planning and management of conferences, product presentations, and various meetings to provide information and making connections in the community is part of the job. Communicating efficiently with doctors is necessary work as a MR, so I feel that having chance to chat with doctors besides business talk is important. I always kept in mind to provide information efficiently and promptly by knowing needs through day-to-day communication.

I started to feel confidence after one year as a MR. As MR is a sales job, it is very glad for our products being adopted, but more than that, my pleasure being a MR is when I hear from doctors that treatment by our product has worked and the patients were happy.

Achieved to get a new product adopted by support from supervisor and colleagues.

I was assigned to a new area from my third year and became in charge of university hospitals and large hospitals around. Larger hospitals have various medical subjects, as well as my responsibility including Internal medicine of Endocrinology & Metabolism. Those hospitals are the center of the community medicine, so the impact of product being adopted will influence clinics around, which makes MR’s job challenging. At the same time, the doctors I contact are very busy and have deeper expertise, so more knowledge and skill will be required to myself.

Canalia is our diabetes’ therapy which is a combination agent from two agents, which is highly evaluated. The challenge for us was it hasn’t been adopted at the university hospital where I was in charge.

To overcome this challenge, we made a detailed plan together with director, team leader, and MRs from companies in collaboration. We met frequently with doctors to receive information and made detailed proposals based on the information. In the proposal, we appealed contribution to patients’ QOL by reducing the drug cost and convenience for medication. Young doctor’s voices also became part of the proposal. Additionally, our unique approach to host conferences including collaboration with the learned society from medical needs we gathered received a very good feedback.

Finally, Canalia was adopted by the university hospital after almost one year of the activities above. To overcome a challenge with support from my supervisor and colleagues became a very valuable experience. I had a sense of achievement as this product being adopted by the university hospital had a positive impact to our office.

Attractiveness of our company is “people”. We have many bright employees.

You may think that personal skills and activity is the point working as a MR because it is a sales job, but making progress together is what our MR team consider important. In that sense, I feel the attractive point of our company are “people”. There are many attractive colleagues in the office, and they are always open to give advice.

Substantial training programs are also an impressive point. Not only the on boarding training program, but there are also periodical programs such as follow up training and second year training programs. Also, I have great relationship with colleagues who joined the company at the same year to grow up together.

In the future, I would like to work at different division, such as Ikuyaku-division by utilizing my experience as a MR. I also want to make contribution to patients waiting for treatment by different ways from a MR, such as working with medical staff and vendors to conduct a clinical trial.

I would like to develop my career on which I feel is a privileged environment.

Career step: 2017 Assigned as a MR for clinics at Yokohama branch
2019 Assigned for university hospitals at Yokohama branch

* The affiliation and description in the article are those at the time of interview.