Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Posted by ma403
24 February 2026In 2019, when I moved to London to pursue a master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry, I would not have anticipated that five years later I’d be doing a PhD in an entirely new discipline – primary care research. Back then, I spent my days in the lab synthesising cytotoxic compounds, working through reaction mechanisms and repeatedly tweaking experiments until I finally produced what I had set out to make.
You may be wondering – how does someone with that background end up in health services research? The answer is in the year between my undergraduate degree and starting the PhD, when I worked at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. I worked in the gastrointestinal (GI) cancer clinical trials unit, where I began to see the real-world impact of the drugs I had once hoped to make. I saw how treatments translated from bench to bedside, and I became increasingly interested in translational healthcare and knew that I wanted to pursue it.
That curiosity brought me to the PhD I am currently undertaking in APEx. My research focuses on the upper GI urgent suspected cancer pathway, specifically on what diagnoses patients receive during this process when the outcome is not cancer. The project involves a systematic review, a quantitative study investigating the non-cancer diagnoses, and an interview study aimed at understanding patient experiences of going through the pathway. It sounds very different from chemistry, doesn’t it?
The transition from organic chemistry to health services research was more challenging than I anticipated. In chemistry, we are taught to think of research as a trial-and-error process, always going back and tweaking experimental conditions until we find what works. Of course we follow protocols, but we are not tied to them. Experimental transparency comes from recording every step and being honest about modifications along the way. Starting the PhD meant quickly rethinking that mindset.
The studies I am planning now must all be carefully designed in advance, with strict protocols I will follow through until the end. If something doesn’t work, there’s no going back and changing parameters until it does. Everything is specified beforehand – protocols written, inclusion criteria predefined, analysis plans made before data extraction begins. This way, scientific rigour is embedded from the outset, rather than refined along the way.
Another significant adjustment was learning new research methods. From systematic reviews to qualitative methods, everything was, and to some extent still is, entirely new to me. One thing I’ve come to appreciate early on is that knowing when to ask for help is a research skill in itself. Reaching out to colleagues and fellow students helped me get up to speed far quicker than if I had tried to navigate everything alone. People are generous with their time, offer practical advice and often simply listen to the inevitable PhD frustrations.
What this transition has taught me is that no matter the discipline, research is rarely linear. Navigating change can be uncomfortable, and often confusing. But I realised that it is often less about the skills themselves, and more about the ability to be flexible and adaptable – learning to shift how you think, staying open to new ways of working and trusting that you are in your position for a reason.