Dania Shamil

Dania graduated from the University of London, School of Pharmacy with a Master of Pharmacy Degree in 2010 and registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council as a qualified pharmacist in 2011.

Dania worked as a hospital pharmacist for two years that included her pre-registration year. Dania was soon after head-hunted to work as a pharmacist in the Home Healthcare Sector. As part of her role she was heavily involved in setting up the pharmacovigilance system and felt the postgraduate programme in pharmacovigilance offered by the DSRU would benefit the development of a career in pharmacovigilance as she was keen to be involved in ensuring patient safety by monitoring the adverse effects of marketed or investigational drugs.

Throughout the course Dania has enjoyed interacting and networking with her peers and expert faculty who work in the same industry. This inspired and motivated her to continue her career in pharmacovigilance.

As a direct result of starting the MSc in Pharmacovigilance with the DSRU, Dania was approached by numerous pharmaceutical companies who felt the qualification added years of experience to her profile, despite only having worked in pharmacovigilance for just over a year. This led to Dania’s first industry role of Senior Pharmacovigilance Associate, which involved centralising and managing pharmacovigilance systems in the UK affiliate.

This role gave Dania experience in working with the European Regulations in pharmacovigilance. The role involved ensuring that Individual Case Safety Reports (ICSRs) were in accordance with European regulations, preparing for pharmacovigilance internal and regulatory audits and inspections, maintenance of the Pharmacovigilance System Master File (PSMF) and managing partner/vendor contracts and pharmacovigilance agreements. Dania felt that all the knowledge she had learnt during the short courses was now being put into practice. Having gained this new knowledge and growing in confidence Dania completed the Post Graduate Diploma in Pharmacovigilance (PgD) award in 2015.

Having worked for a UK affiliate and grasping the day to day pharmacovigilance system concepts, Dania was offered the opportunity and decided that she wanted to move into more specialist role in pharmacovigilance compliance that would help with her career development. Dania is now working as a Senior Pharmacovigilance Regulations Specialist in the International Pharmacovigilance Regulations and Compliance team for a global pharmaceutical company.

Dania says “Without the Masters in Pharmacovigilance behind me it would have been difficult to get into the industry as I did not have pharmaceutical industry experience. The qualification has been a talking point in all of my interviews and it has helped me immensely with my career journey thus far.”

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