A day of a Medical Representative’s life

 Chapter 1

Any person connected to the pharmaceutical industry or a student of pharmaceutical sciences will fairly understand the responsibilities of a medical representative. I am a student and have been exposed to the pharma field for 4 months during my internship. It would be quite interesting for me to share my experiences of those few months where I worked as a management intern from a reputed pharmaceutical company in Mumbai, India and had the same responsibilities of what a medical representative has (basically worked as an MR). Hope this article is of good reference to the beginners in this industry and to those whose can relate to.

Customers of a pharma industry are doctors, chemists and stockists. The job of a medical representative is to basically explain (detailing in pharma terms) your brands to the doctor with the help of a visual aid which contains specific important information about the brands you sell to the doctors & prints (leave behind literature, reminder of all  brands or any particular brand). Nowadays, most of the MNCs provide tabs to the sales force team. An MR also acts as a medium between the company and their customers through various types of activities to build up the face value and relationship with the company.

Each and every day in a MR’s life during work is almost different. A “medical rep” covers around 10 doctors and 10 chemists on an average per day which varies from company to company. Here’s a peak of one such day from my experience of what an MR goes through on a daily basis.

It was a Wednesday. It was one of those usual days where I had to work alone without any joint field work with either of my area manager/regional manager/zonal manager who would jointly work twice or thrice a month. I had to cover 8 doctors and 8 chemists at Grant road. Out of these 8 doctors, 7 were among the top notch DM Cardiologists and one was a renowned MD Diabetologist.  So my day started with waking up at 6:00am in the morning to catch a train from Vile Parle (East) station between 6:45 - 7:00am to Grant Road so that I could get an appointment with Dr. Shirsat (The names of the doctors have been changed to keep their identity confidential) exactly at 8:00am in the hospital where he would give a call ( A sales call which is made by an MR to interact with his/her customers in the pharma industry) to the MRs  at 1:30pm. I had to walk for 15 minutes to reach the hospital from the station. Only the first 5 cards (MR’s identity card provided by the company)  were submitted to the guard who would give it to the doctor. So, it was very important for me to reach on time to be one among those 5 lucky MRs. That day I had successfully submitted my Area Manager’s card to the guard which made me one of those lucky 5.

 My first call started at 11:30am. I didn’t have a personal vehicle and there was ample amount of time. So I came back home as I had no where to wait for 3 hours. I had my breakfast, took a nap and left home at 10:00am again from Vile Parle to reach Grand road. I walked for about 10 minutes to reach Dr. Patel’s clinic. I reached his clinic at 11:35 am. Five more medical reps were already sitting in his clinic waiting for the doctor. After waiting for about 20 minutes, it was time for me go in his chamber. As soon as you get into a doctor’s chamber and greet him, you probably get to know his/her mood at the current moment and it was evident that Dr. Patel was in a hurry and had to rush to conduct an operation at a nearby hospital. So, he requested me to run through the visual aid. I chose to detail him only two very important brands for patients with hypertension. I gave him a reminder card and requested him for prescriptions. He left after he was done with one more MR.

The first call of the day was done. Next, I had to visit Dr. Shirsat. I was successful in getting his appointment in the morning. I reached the hospital at 1:00pm after walking for 10 minutes, waited there for 35 minutes after which we (those 5 lucky MRs)  finally got the call. I was the first one. Dr. Shirsat was in a good mood to talk to. So, I was happy to ask him a few general questions after my detailing was over. Before leaving, I offered him a reminder, greeted him and left. I went to the hospital pharmacy right across the road to enquire about our company’s brand. The chemist was free at the moment. So, I took the opportunity to ask him about all the 14  brands, their availability, prescriber behaviour of Dr.Shirsat, number of strips sold weekly etc. 
 
Unlike some calls where you get to sit and wait in air-conditioned clinics or hospitals, for many of the calls you have to wait on the side of the road, outside a building or a clinic though it varies according to the speciality you are dealing with and other factors like location. For the next call, I and all other MRs had to wait outside a residential apartment. I reached there at 2:10 pm. There were already 5 MRs waiting. For Dr. Kelkar’s call one of the MRs, usually the first one to arrive, would collect the cards of the MRs. I was the 6th one. I wrote my name, company name and my contact number on a note pad and handed the note to the MR who was collecting all the cards as I did not have any more of my manager’s card. Then I had to wait for another 50-80 minutes because Dr. Kelkar usually gave a call between 3:00-3:30 pm. In the meanwhile, I went to 2 pharmacies for survey and then had some snacks that I had with me in my bag to fill my stomach. I hardly found any good restaurants nearby all the clinics and hospitals that I visited. Therefore, once a week when I planned for all the calls in Grant road, my lunch would usually go on a toss and I would survive only on the snacks that I always carried with me.  Finally at 3:30pm, the first 10 MRs went upstairs to the 3rd floor where his clinic was. All the MRs would stand in a line according to their number in the narrow passage. I was the 6th one to go and fortunately Dr.Kelkar  who was an old and friendly doctor was in a good mood too. He asked me about the other MR who visits him from our division. Then, I detailed to him about our brands and discussed a few things about certain activities for which I could enrol him. The call took a good 5-8 minutes after which I rushed to the next call which was very close to this one.

Dr. Deshmukhe’s call usually started exactly at 4:00pm. There was no card system. A large number of MRs, around 15-20, from various companies came and it always looked like a long queue proceeding towards someone to get their job done. The line started from the small hall room of  Dr. Deshmukhe’s clinic and ended in his chamber. There was no rule and whoever got the chance to detail first, took the chance and did so. MRs would offer different kinds of things starting from umbrella to badminton rackets very openly. The call was quick. It took only a few seconds to detail if you didn’t have anything to offer.

This is just the beginning of how the day starts. The rest of the experience will be continued in my next chapter. Please be connected. Comment, share and subscribe to our blog to get more from the “Hyperpysche”!