A day in the life of Medical Representative: No breathing space for Hitesh amid pandemic
Sanjiv Kumar Bakshi
Hoshiarpur, October 19
Hitesh Bansal’s workaday life more demanding than ever. Working as a medical representative (MR) with Zydus Cadila at Hoshiarpur, his day starts as early as 7:30 am. The pressure for meeting the sales target is the only thing on his mind as he steps.
But even though things are opening up amid the unlocking phase, the target to touch seems miles away. “The people are still wary of and hospitals doctors, and if patients are not there, how can the sales improve? From 9 in the morning till 3 in the evening, we are busy calling doctors, meeting them or trying so. We have to ring them up countless times a day,” said Hitesh. His work involves frenetic visits to places like hospitals, clinics and nursing homes – he is always exposed to the risk of getting infected.
He generally calls it a day after 6 when working out of station and around 4 pm when going about the. But that is just one part of work ending and other beginning. The other wave takes around two hours to do the online documentation and reporting of work after taking a bath, sanitising the bag and other items. His lunch is skipped amidst it. “I have my lunch generally after 5 in the evening and that’s the meal that we have after the breakfast in the morning before leaving. Earlier, we used to have it in afternoon wherever we were working but due to pandemic we avoid eating outside,” he shared.
The lockdown adversely affected the working and for about three months there was no meeting with doctors and sales in red. Fortunately, the company stood by him and salary was credited regularly. “In June when the curfew was lifted I started my daily working as per old routine but the new ways of working were adopted. We as MRs have to be in touch with the doctors and are duty-bound to call them and visit hospitals regularly, no matter how harsh the situation,” he said.
The previous methodology of our calls was to see the doctors personally for sharing the samples, medicines and brochures of the products but it’s all gone. So-called ‘window calls’ are now practiced, in which the doctor is on one side of the window and MR on the other. “Every time we have to see a doctor all precautionary measures, including sanitising of bags, samples, use of face shields and masks are a must. Despite this, many of them (doctors) avoid meeting and ask to just drop our reminders and brochures,” Hitesh added.
