Personal tragedy sparked brain health advocacy

For Amanda Milan Smith, brain health is where her professional and personal lives profoundly intersect. Growing up, she was so fascinated by the brain that she initially planned on becoming a psychologist. A nursing career eventually led her to work as a Psych/Neuro Long-term Care Hospitalist. And her father’s journey with Parkinson’s Disease profoundly changed her view of the need for new and improved brain health treatments.

Today, Amanda is a Senior Medical Science Liaison (MSL) with Lundbeck, and she is responsible for relationships with neurologists and headache specialists across Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia. Here, she shares her story and discusses how she draws on her life experience to help make a difference one interaction, one conversation, one patient at a time.

As an MSL, I thrive on building and maintaining relationships with healthcare providers and researchers, as well as internally collaborating within Lundbeck. My role is to be a trusted source of scientific and clinical information. I help ensure that products are being used safely and effectively, while sharing relevant scientific and clinical data specific to key opinion leaders (KOLs) and health care practitioners’ (HCPs) needs.

I have great collaboration with my KOLs, HCPs and internal Lundbeck colleagues. If one of my HCPs has a question about a study or clinical topic, I make it a priority to address their concerns. Whether I’m talking to a nationally known KOL at an academic institution or a local provider, I always begin with the patient in mind. I ask about their patients’ needs. And I ask, ‘which tools in your toolkit are working effectively for patients?’ Then I will delve into a presentation of studies or a clinically appropriate topic for that provider and their patients’ needs.

I’ve been in healthcare for 22 years and began as a registered nurse. As a nurse, I loved being able to help patients and I loved the intricacies of science related to medications, disease states and the portrait of each patient. I transitioned into pharmaceutical sales and then became an MSL. During that time, I was simultaneously working toward a master’s degree in Nursing and became a nurse practitioner (NP). I worked as an NP for about 5 years, owning my own practice for a brief period, and most recently as a Psych/Neuro Hospitalist in long-term care facilities. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and the function of the neurological system. But Lundbeck’s focus is also very personal to me.  My father passed  way in 2017 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease. His almost 10-year journey with Parkinson’s was really challenging. He was not a man who liked medication, and the available treatments were very hard on him. He experienced significant side effects with each different treatment, including hallucinations, and he didn’t want to stay on therapies during his illness. He became very depressed.

When working as an NP in long-term care, there would be days during the last 3 weeks of my father’s life when I would see specific patients and after their visit, I had to go into the bathroom and get a quick cry out, fix the makeup, and return to the floor to continue seeing patients. There were just so many men who had Parkinson’s, who reminded me of my dad. It was a very tough season. I felt like if there were newer, better options for those with Parkinson’s Disease, with decreased incidence of side effects, things could have been easier for my father and all the other patients I saw suffering.

When I learned about the role at Lundbeck, it sounded like a perfect fit for me, given my background. And I was thrilled at the chance to be in the migraine space. I had many long-term care patients who were in significant migraine pain many days per month. To be able to make a difference for people living with significant migraine pain and life-altering symptoms was really meaningful to me.

Amanda's father

I feel like it helps me connect with my providers and KOLs on a peer-to-peer basis because I understand what they’re going through in their day to day. I know the hectic pace, time constraints, the insurance denials, what it’s like, day in and day out. Also, I think it gives me the ability to discuss clinical data in a way that applies to the real world – their real world. 

I feel that the pandemic has taught me resiliency and how to pivot more effectively. It has taught me to be more flexible, and practically taught me new ways of working. Previously, we were all used to working in person for the most part. Now, if a KOL needs a 30-minute call, I can hop on Teams or Zoom or phone, and take care of whatever the need is. In that way, our new ways of working are really speeding the transfer of information. We can meet customer needs almost in real time. 

I also have felt very supported here at Lundbeck and have gained confidence in conquering fear. I realized recently that I had been living in fear since the start of the pandemic. I have learned to call out fear, realize what it is and focus on what’s concrete and real around me. I even led a workshop recently for my team on this because talking about these things openly is so important for our health.

I can definitely say that I feel supported and encouraged here at Lundbeck by my current Regional Director, Shanti Frausto, and by my Senior Director, Annette Ogbru, as well as the Medical Affairs Leadership Team as a whole. I feel that I have flourished under the guidance and coaching that is available to me by different avenues of workstreams and projects. I feel very fortunate to be a part of Lundbeck and the commitment to brain health for better patient outcomes.