Why I left Basic Sciences/Biomedical Research

I remember when I was in graduate school, working towards my Master’s of Science in Microbiology and Immunology. I went into grad school directly from my undergrad – in hindsight, that was a terrible decision, and soon I realized I hated the day-to-day tasks that made up the life of a biomedical researcher. While I loved science, and research, I didn’t realize what being in a ‘wet lab’ environment would be like. Most days, I worked all by myself or with just one other colleague in an isolated and secure laboratory facility which constrained biosafety level 3 working spaces to handle viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis C and so on. I got to do many cool experiments, but many of these would take days and weeks to finally generate the results, and many a times we would find out at the final stage that the experiment had failed. y day-to-day was mundane as I had to do monotonous activities, over and over and over again, by switching up just one small thing, to see if that one alteration would be sufficient to change the result (a process called optimization). Since lab experiments take up different stretches of time (some take a few hours to complete, while others can take 14 or 16 hours to complete), I did not have any 9-5 kind of schedule. I could not go back home each day at the same time and have any work-life balance. I often worked on weekends and holidays, because cells and viruses did not take days off and experiments needed to run their course to keep generating results. I was not able to take up hobbies, I did not have fun work friends to chat with as I worked, I spent many days going into the lab early in the morning before the sun came out and went in after the sun had set. In short, I was miserable.

Why I chose clinical research?

One of the things that frustrated me the most about “basic science” is that nobody, not even scientists on grant review comittees or poster competition judges, would be easily convinced of how “relevant” the findings would be to the real, clinical world. Often times, scientists became so obsessed with discovering the mysteries of the sub-cellular world and its functions, they forgot why they were doing those particular experiments, and how they would lead back to change healthcare and impact human life in a meaningful way. Many scientists, after a while, just chased grants and high ranked publications by focusing on novel discoveries within the sub cellular world, with often limited position to translate to real world impacts any time soon or at all. This was perhaps why, I began to grow an immediate interest in clinical research the first time I found out about it. I remember I was at a conference, and along with all the biomed research students, there were students from nursing schools and medical schools, who were presenting their findings from actual patients who had made either lifestyle changes or changed in the combination of drugs they took for different conditions, and how it changed their health outcome. I couldn’t fathom how direct an impact was observed in that type of research, and how powerful it must feel to be able to facilitate that kind of change in people’s health status in the real world. I spoke to many students and some of the research nurses at the research institute where I worked – and almost all of them were able to keep a 9-to-5 schedule by booking the time of patient’s appointments, and fitting in their procedures, data collection, analysis etc within reasonable hours. I was amazed to learnt hat one could actually have a life and do cool research at the same time that had such immediate (or relatively quick) impact on the health industry.

Transferring to clinical research from basic science

Once I had finished up my Master’s degree after 2 painful years, publications, a 200-page thesis, and a defense later, I was finally ready to move to clinical research! I was confident that my amazing grades , publications, and list of scholarships and awards collected throughout my undergraduate and graduate programs made me a very lucrative candidate in the job market. I began to apply to lots of jobs in the weeks that followed. About 90% of the jobs I applied to were in clinical research roles, while about 10% were back-ups in the basic science labs as a research technician. To my utter dismay, I did not get a single interview call from a clinical research job. I eventually reached out to a few people I knew who were involved in clinical research, and I learned that nothing on my resume, none of my skills or experiences, matched up with what they were looking for. I had never interacted with patients in any capacity, as I was always far away inside a lab. I did not understand how to consent patients, handle personal health information, perform analysis on large scale health data sets, deal with clinical research ethics boards to perform trials on human subjects. Heck, I did not even have basic trainings and certifications on things like Good Clinical Practice (GCP), TCPS2, TGD, or anything! I didn’t speak the second official language, which already meant I could not take on some of the roles which required English-French bilingualism. I did not know how to use a simple Electronic Medical Records (EMR) database at the hospital to search up patient data for clinical research tasks. This left be absolutely heartbroken. Meanwhile, I ended up getting 2 job interviews for the laboratory research technician roles – one at a vaccine manufacturing industry and one within an academic research laboratory. I finally understood, that apart from being inside a lab, I had no experience that made me desirable for any other job.

Where to start: transferring skills from biomedical sciences to clinical research

I was determined not to go back to a lab, where I had spent two very unhappy years. And so, I began to spend long periods of time researching things on the computer, trying to find clues of how I could get those skills which I so badly needed to work in clinical research. The first and most disappointing thing was that at that time (this was in 2017) there were barely any clinical research content on social media, be it youtube, facebook, instagram. Nobody was out there telling me how to apply, which courses to do, how to transfer some of the more general science skills I had acquired, where to get some of these certifications done. Especially in Canada, where the job market was slightly different from the US, there was absolutely no one to advise me. Any time I googled, it appeared that I needed to go back and do this diploma, or that certification. I knew I needed some more training, but I had to be sure of what kind of schooling I get because by then I had already wasted 6 years at university, doing something I did not end up loving. I did not want to waste my 20s, and again be the same situation, where I was not very employable in anything at all outside a very niche industry.

The good thing about reality checks, no matter how harsh they are, is that it is always a great starting point. This reality check about my limited skill sets in clinical research forced me to reflect on what skills I had in my repertoire, and then read through hundreds of job ads on websites like indeed & linkedin to figure out what skills I needed to have. I started off by making a list of the skills I was missing.

What I discovered over the next few weeks made way for a successful career in clinical research. I will leave that story for another day. But I wanted to share with you all, just how difficult it can be to transition from one industry to another, even when in theory they seem to be so well related. However, it does not have to be that difficult for everyone. The things I discovered over the following months helped me realize how it can be quite easy to make the transition if you simply do your research, and work at it with a good career transition strategy. It will take some work and perhaps a little time, but it is definitely doable.

Keep reading my blog posts to find out exactly how I made this transition.