Question: Has having a family changed your career choice, or inspired you to specifically pursue children's medicines?

Robert Ives answered on 29 Apr 2020:

Hi. Having children didn’t affect my career choice exactly, but making medicines for children is incredibly important and so it does make this feel a little bit more personal to me. Most medicines are only made for adults and children are not always ‘little adults’ because the medicines can work in different ways in children. Also, often, children have to take adult medicine which might be a large pill that is hard to swallow, or tastes really bad. This might not sound that important, but a medicine can only make a patient better if the patient actually takes the medicine. If the patient will not take the medicine, spits a bit out or is sick (vomits), then they may not get any better.

We are quite lucky in Europe compared with most of the rest of the World because we do have quite a few ‘child friendly’ medicines available to use, but we still do not have as many as we should. In other parts of the World, even including places like Canada, there are very few medicines that are made for children and this makes it very difficult for the caregivers to get the children to take all of their medicine, every day.

There are lots of areas of medicine and medical research in which to consider starting a career. I have friends who work at a big childrens hospital in London and they find it the most rewarding work in the World, although it can also be very sad when children do not get better. You will often find in life that things that can make you feel incredibly good (such as a great career) can also sometimes make you feel incredibly low – just ask your teachers! But the rewards are normally worth it. 🙂