Gary D. Tollefson Transition to a New Kind of Academia: Pharmaceutical Medicine, Pharmaceutical R&D [The Pharmaceutical Industry]

Beast. The Beast was inanimate. It was endless stacks of charts, piles of phone messages, prescription renewal requests, unopened correspondence, grant proposals, manuscripts in preparation, hospital policy and procedure manuals, budget sheets ... you get the point. Life in academic medicine was fun. Past tense may be a bit unfair; I suppose it still can be. And experience as an academic researcher, teacher, clinician, and administrator builds a tremendous career foundation. But after a while, the phrase "been there, done it" rings all too real. In our current health care environment, change is the only constant. The practice of academic medicine was becoming less fun, not like "the good old days." In my case, dissonance eventually led to change. The transition to a major new challenge, in an enriched environment dedicated to achieving tangible research and better health care solutions for patients, was seductive. But first, the background.