Drug Safety Specialist

If you walk into any pharmacy, you’ll find rows of prescription and nonprescription medications for myriad diseases and ailments. These medications have been approved by the government following extensive testing. However, even after medications hit the market, follow-up is required to monitor both their success and their safety. It’s the job of the Drug Safety Specialist to collect this information and report it to the appropriate governmental agency.

As a Drug Safety Specialist, you work for a pharmaceutical company, research facility, or the government. For your daily duties, you review information about reactions to specific medications. That data is collected through questionnaires, surveys, and Physician reports.

Your goal as a Drug Safety Specialist is to find out about any side effects caused by the medication. You may even talk directly with patients to gather information and answer questions. When a patient reports a side effect, you review the data. Then you prioritize.

If the side effect is common, you add it to a report that you submit periodically according to your employer’s and governmental policies. If it’s a unique or “adverse event,” you immediately create a report and submit it the same day. The report is then passed on to the Drug Safety Physician, who evaluates whether the drug is actually causing the side effect.

Although it’s not always easy on the patients or the pharmaceutical companies, you play an important role in ensuring safe medical options.