We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anna Titkova a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Anna, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
On the 24th of February with the first bomb the life of each Ukrainian was divided into before and after. On the 24th of February morning each Ukrainian started to write his/her own history of war. Working in a medical field, namely in the clinical research area I realized that I have responsibility not only for my family, for my employees, but also for our patients, who have already participated in clinical trials or were just starting participation and who appeared to be F2F with their disease along. And my resilience were coming from these people while speaking with them and asking “How are you?”, while telling them that they are real heroes who have courage to fight with their reality and diseases. We must remember that everyone we meet is fighting a battle we know nothing about. There is a story behind every person. There is a reason why they are the way they are. You never know when one little gesture can change somebody’s life. Rumi -a percid poet of the 13th century said: ’Listen with the ears of tolerance. See through the eyes of compassion. Speak with the language of love”.
And our duty is to take care of these people, people who desperately need to see good in humanity and to help these people to rewrite their history of war, where they will defeat their disease, as Ukraine will defeat its enemy, where good will outfight evil and life will win death.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Anna Titkova, MD, PhD, Prof., MBA, Country Head of the Ukrainian part of international site management organization Pratia Ukraine and Director of private medical center Pratia Clinic Ukraine.
I graduated from Kharkiv National Medical University and work on the position of Assoc. Professor here. I have a PhD, Master of Medical Sciences, MBA and master’s degree in pedagogy, completed an internship at Harvard and Yale Universities, and I am a qualified international lecturer and senior researcher. I am the author of more than 150 scientific publications, monographs, I have 5 patents on inventions, and I am an independent reviewer of scientific medical articles in the Ministry of Health of Ukraine journals.
In March 2020, I opened the Pratia Ukraine LLC and the first SMO clinical research site, Pratia Clinic Ukraine, part of the international site network Pratia under the umbrella of the NEUCA group. For me, this process of company creation here in Ukraine can be compared with the growing of my own child, when he or she still learns how to speak, just starts walking confidently and should be tought a lot of new things that are followed by many challenges, difficulties, and issues. But at the same time, they bring you so many satisfactions and proud of what you are doing as when you are happy of the first tooth, first word, first step of your child. For this period, we created a site network within 10 research sites in 4 UA regions. We open our SMO medical research center (the first one of this type in Ukraine) and started CTs there, we received the recognition as the best world recruiter in Covid trial, and then the 24th of February came.
Our main mission is to give patients’ access to innovative medicines and we are working hard to make the patients’ voice heard especcially in the circumstances of war in my country. I believe that the international community should not forget about our country, we should be open to dialogue and possible search for conscientious solutions, how we can help Ukrainian patients, medical professionals, the economy of Ukraine at such a difficult time during such an unjust and difficult war. We should ask ourselves the question: are we flexible? Are we transparent? Are we fully committed to our mission in clinical trials? Now the whole world is passing the test on humanity and what will be the result depends on everyone.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three most important qualities in my life till today are honesty with yourself, wit the people around you and with a common work you do, self-discipline in all activites and love to the work perfomed.
I may say that when you take a decision to start your new journey you must not hesitate in your forces, you must firmly belief in your idea and you must love the process of achieving your goals. And having these factors, people around you will be infected by your vision and will follow you in this journey.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
The main and obvious challenge that we have now is the war in Ukraine that influences all the areas of our lives, ruins our economy and destroys the normal life of people. We have a unique unpredictable situation. No one taught us how to survive in a war, what the 2-wall rule means if you want to save your life under fire and what the interval between each serene sound means and which one you need to run to the bomb shelter. Now these rules know even each Ukrainian child. And all of us who were lucky to escape from that horror bring this war inside ourselves because it cannot simply disappear, it is a terrible part of you for the rest of your life.
From my point of view the Ukrainian war puts on top our main principle of clinical trials – patient who is on the first place and in the center of our activities, the main reason why we do our job. We make the maximum efforts to search for UA trial participants, to find the research team members from Ukraine who may know these patients and their route from the end of February, and to engage them into clinical trials. I participate in numerous interviews, forums, conferences to show the world our life, our needs and our belief in the prosperous and independent future.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pratia.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-titkova-76b166169/
