CLinical Statistician Review

It was a good year and I would recommend anyone who is unsure in a field to take a placement to see whether it is something that they'd like to do long-term. No point going training to do a job if you would end up not liking it in the future and a placement is a great way of seeing this.

I felt like another member of the team which was great as I know a lot of people doing placements felt like the "bunny" doing boring and repetitive tasks that other people didn't want to do and not really learning anything. I was always used as an asset to implement new ideas.

My Line manager and supervisor of my project were extremely good, tried to give me as much "space" as possible to develop my own ideas and to try new methods out but they always had the time to sit down and discuss what I thought and to give their advice.

On a daily basis I always had something to do which is what you would like in a placement - always the opportunity to learn new things. Like with all jobs there were quieter and busier periods

I was given a lot of responsibility during my placement, it involved QCing data and also the opportunity to develop my own R package to automate presentations. I had this responsibility to deliver the end product but along the way had multiple people I could call on for advice and help.

Working at a big firm such as GSK, means that there are lots of training opportunities, for this this involved SAS and R training courses along with specific statistical methods and how to use them in the real world. Will definitely come in useful next year during my university modules.

I mean the general atmosphere in the office is what I would assume most focused jobs would be, everyone was focussed on their work and getting it done to the best of their ability. In lunch and breaks it was more lively but overall most people were focussed o nthe job at hand

It was set-up well in that they had all the resources you could need in order to get the job done, could have been stored in an easier to navigate system but if I ever didn't know where something was all I had to do was ask and they'd show me.

The company invested in me in that I got to go to some statistics conferences as well as attend lots of training courses to better my understanding and ability to do the job well.

If I end up working in the pharmaceutical industry, I think GSK certainly has a lot of offer - they look after their staff really well and employee satisfaction is one of their top priorities. They are also very focussed on career development atleast in the statistics department I worked in.

At my site there were only 9 other placement students so it wasn't great - but most other sites have 50 + placement students so I hear they have a much more active social scene. Although there were ~ once a month department socials, some of which were sponsored by GSK.

Living in London is not exactly cheap and going out is rather expensive - personally I'm not a going out kind of person so didn't affect me too much but I know other placement students spent an awful lot of money going out and having a nice time in and around London.

From other people, they say it is great and they loved every minute of going out so if it's your cup of tea working in and around London is great for that. As I said above - going out isn't my cup of tea so didn't do it at all.

At Stockley Park where I worked there was less opportunities than other places but future placements will be happening at GSK house where there are a lot more opportunities including subsidised gyms/yoga e.t.c which