Life as a Pharmacist (LP) Stories
“LP Stories” is a PSN-YPG Lagos series that spotlights unique experiences and views of Young Pharmacists in their areas of practice.
Kindly introduce yourself
My name is Nurudeen Olalekan Oketade. I am a graduate of the University of Lagos. I graduated in 2016, after which I worked as a community pharmacist for about 2–3 years. I transitioned to the research industry soon after where I currently work as a research assistant and a clinical trials pharmacist at the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria situated in Abuja.
Wow, interesting summary and an even more interesting career path. What were your expectations and perception of pharmacy before getting into pharmacy school?
So, before getting into pharmacy school or choosing pharmacy as a profession, my perception of what a pharmacist does was mainly the clinical aspect which entails working in the community pharmacy or hospital pharmacy. I didn’t know much about the other roles that a pharmacist could play in the healthcare industry, or even the scientific industry at large.
My plan initially was to go to school, get a pharmacy degree, open up a community pharmacy or work in a hospital and from there, the next steps will come.
At that point, I wasn’t looking beyond pharmacy school, at what I’d like to do, maybe because I just had pharmacy school in front of me.
However, on getting into pharmacy school, I was exposed to several other areas where pharmacists could work: policy development, research, industry, and so on. It was interesting to see those other aspects and several opportunities I could get from being a pharmacist.
What got you interested in research?
Basically, there were two reasons why I got interested in research. First and foremost is that right from my time as an undergraduate, I was an inquisitive person. I always wanted to know more about what we were taught in class, be it pharmacology, physiology, pharmaceutical chemistry, I always wanted to know “how did these laws/theories and other current knowledge that we learned about, come to be”.
That inquisitiveness helped me understand the presence of a scientific process of discovery, made possible through research, and that whatever theory/law or discoveries we were learning about in class; were all found out through scientific research. That was my first contact with the idea of awareness about research.
Secondly, during my time as a community and hospital pharmacist, I always had certain questions about the clinical practice that I wanted to be answered, such as “Why does this patient react/not react to a particular drug in a particular way?”, “Why does a particular drug not work in the same way for everybody?”, “Why are there variations in treatment responses?”.
That’s when I decided to know more about how these things work and wanted to further my education through a master’s or Ph.D. in pharmacogenomics or pharmacogenetics.
While trying to look for opportunities, I realized that I didn’t have much experience in that field, apart from my undergraduate thesis which wasn’t in the pharmacogenomics area.
So, I sought out opportunities for places I could work in research and found myself at theInstitute of Human Virology for my youth service year, during which I became engrossed in research and appreciated the field more.
I got to see how we came up with questions that we wanted to be answered and the process for coming up with tactful methodologies to get those questions answered. The whole process was new and interesting, and definitely more exciting than my time in the clinical (community/hospital) practice.
Not to paint clinical practice in Nigeria in a negative light, but during my time there, I didn’t find much exciting. It was quite redundant and monotonous, with the same “see a patient, treat malaria/typhoid and repeat the same process”.
However, with my time in research, I had to learn new things every day, update myself on current trends in the field, and all that contributed to me being more interested in research and sticking to research, as I felt it was somewhere I could develop myself more.
After NYSC, I was retained and still work in research, although my research interests have changed slightly towards microbiology and immunology, the reasons behind my interest in research remain the same.
Wow, so what is your typical day-to-day like now as a clinical trials/research pharmacist?
I majorly serve two roles in my day-to-day activities. I work as a Clinical Trials Pharmacist and as a Research Assistant.
As a clinical trials pharmacist, I’m working on 2 studies, soon to be extended to 3 different clinical trials. The first is HIV-related in which we’re testing a new combination of drugs as antiretroviral therapy. As a clinical trials pharmacist, my duties are to ensure that there is a steady supply of the drugs for our recruited participants. It involves a lot of logistics, meetings, monitoring, and evaluation of pharmacy units in our primary sites, and because of the nature of the job and the source of funding is mainly external, there’s a lot of documentation to be done, meaning I have to ensure the documentations are appropriately done by the site pharmacists by checking up on them regularly. I go to the sites, check the logs (records of what’s being dispensed), alongside other documentation (storage conditions of the drug, prediction of trends in participant visits to pharmacy and amount of drugs needed in that period, and so on).
The second is on Covid-19, in which we’re testing a novel drug on Covid-19 called Hyper-immunoglobulin. For this study, my role involves preparing the drugs (thermo-labile drug), ensure the drug is kept at its ideal of 2–⁸⁰C, monitoring the refrigerators and documenting to note if there are any temperature changes of concern, monitoring stock levels, and ensuring that when there’s a prescription for it, the prescription is filled properly and that the drug gets to the site where it’s needed in good condition.
The interesting part of this study is that it’s a randomized, double-blinded clinical trial, so the only person that knows what the patient is taking is the Pharmacist; ergo the role of blinding is like the primary function of the pharmacist.
In terms of drug preparation, you have to make sure that the time used in preparing both the formulation with the active pharmaceutical ingredient and the formulation with the placebo is similar so that the person administering the drug or the user of the drug won’t be able to differentiate which is which.
In any case, where there is an adverse reaction to the drug, the pharmacist is the one to un-blind that particular patient and allows a selected few of the clinical trial staff to know what the patient is taking, that’s hardly ever the case though. Un-blinding reduces the quality of the clinical trial, so we try as much as possible to avoid that.
So, those are my functions as a clinical trial pharmacist and the functions are quite similar to what a pharmacist in logistics & supply chain management does. It’s just that in clinical trials pharmacy, you’re involved in the blinding and provision of clinical information about the drug.
The functions may sound simple, but implementation can be quite cumbersome. There are a lot of times you have to wake up so early in the morning, just to make sure your patient gets the required drug at the required time because there’re deadlines for everything that you’re doing.
My role as a research assistant is much more dynamic, however, my day-to-day activities in that aspect are not the same.
The project I’m working on as a research assistant is: “Determination of Rate of Prevalence of Latent Tuberculosis in Healthcare Workers”. In that role, my functions usually are to go to the site and collect samples from our participants (i.e. health workers), take the samples to the lab for processing. Sometimes, I also take part in the processing.
There are times where I also have to make presentations on what the study is currently doing, our findings in the study, and so on.
Another aspect in addition to recruiting health workers for the study is also training the health workers on tuberculosis infection control in hospitals.
As a research assistant, there are times I have to write proposals, create data collection tools and write protocols.
I’m currently working on a protocol for a sub-study for this latent tuberculosis study involving immunological biomarkers that will be used to predict latent tuberculosis infection, which is something I’m interested in working on further as a postgraduate degree.
Yeah, so that’s what I do.
Lol, I know it’s very lengthy, but I just wanted to make sure I cover everything.
Lol, lengthy but super-informative. I didn’t know there was this whole world of interesting work for pharmacists in research, especially in clinical trials too. Nice to know that all the randomized, blinded trials we learned about on paper in pharmacy school have a place in Nigeria.
What do you hope/plan to achieve in the clinical trial/research sphere?
Basically, my initial plan was to understand what the research process was like. Although I had some exposure while doing my undergraduate thesis, I felt that wasn’t enough and I needed more. I think I’ve gotten that from this institute and am still getting more of what I need to be a better researcher.
With this experience, I’ve decided to further my education and get a postgraduate degree, focusing specifically on microbiology, and my experience with clinical trials has enlightened me on the requirements for the evaluation of the effectiveness of a new drug.
My combination of experiences has helped me see things differently from when I was working in community pharmacy. I’m looking beyond immediate benefits (as I would for a patient in a community setting), I’m looking at how I can work on something that would benefit not just one person, but a whole population.
I also noticed by being in this sphere, that not much research is being done in the biomedical sciences, and that’s something I’d like to change.
I’d like to increase awareness that research is one of those career choices that we could make as a pharmacist. Apart from things like public health, clinical pharmacy, we can work in biomedical sciences, cancer pharmacology, microbiology, immunology, and other areas.
As pharmacists, we have the advantage of being exposed to all these areas in our undergraduate training, so my main goal is to build on that and increase awareness of how broad the pharmacy practice field is. I realized in talking to some of my colleagues in the profession, they didn’t know that clinical trials are done in Nigeria. I’d like to help get rid of such misconceptions and help people understand the advantages of clinical trials being done in our part of the world.
The drugs we use here need to be tested for their efficacy in our population, not in the Asian and Caucasian population where they’re tested and you can’t vouch for the same efficacy when the same drugs are used here. The only way we can achieve that is for us to do these kinds of clinical trials on different drugs (not just for covid-19, but also for some of our common ailments here)
Another misconception is that our population is being used as guinea pigs for drugs that will harm us, which is not true because trials happen everywhere and the process of recruitment into trials is rigorous to ensure there is no coercion in participation in trials. (A lot of pharmacists know about the informed consent process and its use in such cases).
I also want to have my primary research that will focus on trying to find better ways to diagnose and treat infectious diseases.
What’s it like living and working in Abuja? Especially compared to Lagos
I schooled in Lagos and there’s a big difference between Lagos and Abuja, and it’s obvious to anyone that’s been to both places that the traffic situation is a major issue in Lagos. Living in Abuja might be a bit expensive in some ways, especially if you live on your own, but the traffic of Lagos is something that I can’t deal with.
Despite my 5 years in Lagos, I don’t think I could survive in that environment
Kindly share any memorable experience(s) from your journey so far.
I remember my first few weeks as a research assistant, in which I was just trying to learn the ropes and get used to the system because it was different from what I’d ever done in the community/hospital setting.
I was trying to acclimatize. So, I got this e-mail from one of my bosses saying she needed me to prepare a concept paper for a particular study. I was shocked coz I didn’t even know what a concept paper was. I had to start googling and reading, trying to understand what the email was all about.
As a community/hospital pharmacist, you don’t write as much as part of your primary duty, but I remember having to reach out to several people in the office to give me pointers.
At the end day, after I submitted the first draft of what I wrote, the criticism I got was out of this world. I had to start from scratch again.
What I appreciate about research is that you have to be dogged, because you’ll receive criticism for almost everything you do, and you have to go back, work on the criticism(s) and get better. It was memorable for me because that was the beginning of my time as a research assistant.
What are/were some of the bottlenecks you face(d) in carrying out your work?
Because my research work is mainly in the sphere of public health and microbiology, I think the initial hurdle I faced is that my undergraduate training didn’t allow me to get the most knowledge in these areas. We might have touched on pharmaceutical microbiology, we did some public health in the final year, but it wasn’t enough to carry me through. It wasn’t that big of a hurdle, I just saw it as an opportunity to learn more and I remember having to do several online courses, read a lot of papers to understand what I was working on.
Overcoming that hurdle is one of the joys of the whole process. Such a bottleneck can either set you back without recovery or you can use the opportunity to do something about it and learn from it.
It’s funny now coz I tend to forget that my primary degree is in pharmacy because most of the things I do, especially in the research sphere do not require things I would have done as a pharmacist. Most of the knowledge I use is things I learned after pharmacy school. Even in my office space, I’m seen as a researcher first, then maybe upon further discussion, they get to realize I’m a pharmacist.
Another challenge I faced was in trying to switch to the research role when I came into the institute, and in stating that I was a pharmacist, I was mostly advised to go to the pharmacy unit. It was a bit of a challenge having to prove myself, and putting in more work to show that I wasn’t just interested in the pharmacy aspect of research, but also in the whole research process itself.
Asides from research and clinical trials, do you feel there are more roles pharmacists can occupy in such bodies such as the Institute of Human Virology and if yes, what are they?
Yes definitely. There are several roles that the training as a Pharmacist prepares you for.
In recent times, there’s been a trend of pharmacists not just sticking to the traditional roles but going out there to fields that haven’t even been explored before. We have pharmacists in tech, in the public health sector making waves, and in the institute where we have several strategies to achieve our goals. Apart from the research, we also have several programs that are run to ensure that WHO goals for HIV are achieved through advocacy and other strategies.
Lately, it has become more apparent, the role that pharmacists play in areas such as logistics and supply chain management, which happens in the institute and several other institutions just like it too.
With the increased awareness of tele-pharmacy, I feel that there will be more roles for pharmacists to take up, especially for tech-savvy pharmacists.
I think there are several spaces that pharmacists can occupy and it’s a very good time to be a pharmacist.
Speaking of training as a pharmacist, what impact and memories of pharmacy school still stick with you to this day?
Yeah, so, in terms of impact, I think there are several things that I’ve taken from pharmacy school and they’ve really helped me in life, in coping with real-life situations. Every pharmacist that has gone through pharmacy school knows the rigorous curriculum that you’d go through, so it’s important to be able to manage your time and plan properly for you to excel academically, and that’s one of the things that stuck with me, even after graduating, and I’m really grateful for being able to learn that from pharmacy school.
For memories, there are several memories that I had going through pharmacy school, both negative and positive. I’d want to stick to the positive ones which helped me going forward, such as the extra-curricular I took part in with the Pharmaceutical Association of Nigerian Students body. I was the Treasurer in my 4th year and a member of the legislative council in my 5th year. It was a terrific experience for me, due to how I’d work in teams, and the camaraderie formed while trying to achieve a common goal was something that I enjoyed.
There are several memories I wouldn’t want to mention because they were really scarring. I appreciate the leadership experience I got at that time because most of the people I worked with eventually got into positions in YPG and are currently doing very tremendous and groundbreaking things in YPG.
It’s just good that that leadership spirit imbibed in us as undergraduates continue after school, and whenever I see people that I’ve had that close relationship with doing so well in different fields and spheres, I tend to be so happy that yeah, I think I’m in the right profession.
Any side hustles?
It depends on your definition of side hustle. If side hustle entails additional income apart from primary job, then no, I don’t have a current side hustle.
But I feel side hustle should also entail things that are improving you, skills you’re acquiring as a person, in which case, I try doing several other things that I feel are important for me, skills that would be an asset for me in the future.
I’m currently learning programming as a skill, and I’m also learning how to handle genomics data using several bioinformatics tools. I feel these are things that are important in helping me become a biomedical researcher, and there are several other things in mind, but I don’t think I can add any other thing to my current schedule since there are only 24 hours in a day.
Hmmm, If not Pharmacy, what else would you have like to study?
If not pharmacy, then I most likely would have studied Chemical engineering.
Lastly, your social media pages so that our readers can follow you, podcast links too so that they can be touched by your words
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nurudeen-oketade-olalekan
Twitter: @NurudeenOketade
Thank you so much for your time!
Thanks as well for the privilege. I had a blast.
Mobolaji Uthman, a member of the Editorial Committee did this…
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