We continue with our Professional Identity and Medicines Development series. We are pleased to share a well-written essay from Academy alumni Michal Kantecki, MD. We are grateful for Michal’s contributions to our community.

“Discuss the development and status of your own Professional Identity and what it means in terms of your job, your career, and future prospects.“

Michal Kantecki graduated from the Medical Academy in Warsaw and specialized in Pediatrics in an academic hospital in Poland. His previous positions included work as Medical Advisor (Johnson & Johnson) and Product Manager (Valeant).
Michal joined Pfizer Poland in 2004 and gained wide experience in antifungal drugs and hospital business working in the Marketing and Medical Departments. As Medical Advisor he was responsible for the Anti-infective portfolio. He joined Pfizer regional European team in 2007 working with antifungals. From 2014, he was leading the Regional Medical Affairs Team before joining the global team as product Global Medical Lead (2016). His responsibilities encompass an in-line product as well as an antibiotic in development.

“I graduated from medical school more than 25 years ago and worked in a children’s hospital for a couple of years thereafter. During this time, I gained substantial knowledge of pediatrics and practical hospital management. I participated in clinical studies as investigator and cooperated with pharma industry. After a few years I realized that my preference in more in organizing healthcare and publishing than actually delivering care to patients, so I moved to the industry. First, to a generic company, then moving to innovating pharma. During all my years in the business, I developed specialized knowledge and several skills. I was exposed to changing parameters as the environment, job requirements, geographic scope, and degree of responsibility, including people management. My responsibilities have grown in terms of managed budgets, people management and increasingly important roles. I participated in many in-company and external trainings, on the technical aspects, management, and leadership. I was also lucky to work with great managers and leaders, as well as inspirational colleagues, often more experienced than myself. I started at a country organization, marketing position and I went to the medical department, regional roles and I am now in a senior Global Medical Affairs position.

I believe that all these experiences allowed to build my strong Professional Identity and that I passed the steps described during our EPA webinar as the pathway of “knowing, showing, doing and being” 1. I believe, I always act with good faith, integrity, quality, and to the benefit of patients that are or may be exposed to the medicines I am in charge of.

I am convinced that a long-term vision of a professional career is crucial to succeeding in building a Professional Identity and one should focus on accumulating knowledge and skills, but even more importantly, acting in a way to build trust, confidence, integrity, and professionalism. Such an attitude allows access to the next level of being recognized not only as an expert, but also as a personification of professionalism. I believe that this is the pinnacle of career development and should be the aim of all of us, Medical Affairs Specialists.

I think I was lucky enough to be never exposed to a conflict of organizational identity and Professional one, as described in the Wikipedia article 2. Such a situation may occur in certain organizations and probably may be more probably if the Professional Identity among peers is not strong enough or the organization is not oriented on long-term vision and culture. Again, I stay in the same company for now more than 17 years because of the trust in its integrity, purpose-driven organization and culture.

I look into the future with confidence as I trust my professional experience and acumen, that we can certainly call by the term of Professional Identity allow me to continue to serve patients and physicians in my current role in Medical Affairs or look forward to any changes in my position. I feel confident to be able to evolve in my role or take new/ different responsibilities if needed.

In summary, I trust my Professional Identity is one of my strengths that I express in my everyday work and life.”

References

  1. Hazen AC et al. Academic Medicine, 2018, 93, 10:1531
  2. Professional Identification- Wikipedia

Disclaimers

  • The material in these reviews is from various public open access sources, meant for educational and informational purposes only
  • Any personal opinions expressed are those of only the author(s) and are not intended to represent the position of any organization(s)
  • No official support by any organization(s) has been provided or should be inferred