We spoke to Nishma, who reflected on her time as a placement student at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Supply Chain at Ware in the Incoming Materials Quality Control Laboratory.
On the 21st of August 2020, I completed my 13 month extended placement at GlaxoSmithKline, Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (GSK-PSC) at Ware in the Incoming Materials Quality Control Laboratory. I was fortunate to be a part of the Micronising Team where I carried out various analytical testing techniques on both commercial and stability batches on micronised Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API’s). These included Particle Size, HPLC and Karl Fischer testing. Throughout the year I was involved in Gembas, Continuous Improvement Frameworks and 5S Standard ways of working. I created confirmations to the 5S standards within the testing areas in the laboratory to ensure the team was set up for success.
I represented my team by being a part of a site wide Logbooks onto Veeva Quality Docs project and as a Lab Communications Rep for the site’s weekly Quality Newsletter. Despite the challenges, I was lucky enough to be going into work throughout the Covid-19 pandemic as I learnt the importance of maintaining the supply of medicines from the site.
I am also proud to have received the Industrial Cadet Platinum Leader Award through the EDT (The Engineering Development Trust) for my accredited work at GSK Ware. The programme has provided me the opportunity to develop a variation of key skills/competencies and demonstrate them in the working environment.
During my placement, I also took part in multiple charity and STEM events like organising the site’s Christmas Jumper Day and raising money for Save the Children and being a panellist on the Headstart and Inspire course live Q&A session alongside other GSK Industrial Placement students respectively.
It’s been a fantastic year of developing both personally and professionally and I would like to thank my whole team for the constant support and guidance they have showed me during my time in the lab.