The “big resignation” has greatly affected the field of clinical research.Clinical Research Assistant (CRA) turnover is now hovering about 30%while the number of open positions across the industry 9.3% increase.
Staffing shortages can slow trial timelines and negatively impact patients as they spend less time with the doctors and nurses providing care. In the long run, education and certification programs can increase awareness of clinical trials and attract more people into the industry. But in the short term, clinical research institutions and sponsors need strategies to conduct trials efficiently and safely with limited staff.
This is where technology comes into play. Rather than frantically looking for new hires, websites and sponsors can fight mass resignations by using technology to help employees who do more work in the same amount of time.
What’s causing the huge resignation in clinical research
Clinical research professionals have experienced the same burnout and reassessment of priorities that many workers have experienced during the pandemic. But the stress of working in healthcare during a public healthcare crisis can exacerbate burnout. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, 76% of healthcare professionals Reports of feeling exhausted and burnt out since the pandemic, with 61% Of all the professionals who reported feeling this way.
Research center staff often work long hours to accommodate investigator and patient schedules and strict trial schedules. During the pandemic, they took on additional disease risks while caring for patients or conducting clinical research procedures.
Clinical researchers face a different set of struggles. CRA costs approx. They travel 60% to 80% of the time, which can lead to high burnout rates.CRA jobs in the US have a Turnover rate 30%. By comparison, the overall turnover rate in the U.S. is about 19%.
With limited growth opportunities, many clinical trial professionals also choose to look for new jobs.After several years of clinical research, clinical research coordinators, project managers and CRAs often see their wages stagnant.
The combination of heavy workload, emotional stress, and lack of progress results in high turnover in clinical research.
Consequences of staff shortages
In clinical studies, staffing shortages can lead to long initiation times and missed deadlines, leading to delays in the submission and approval of new treatments. For sponsors, shortages also result in delayed surveillance visits, which can slow trials and prevent the CRA from catching errors early.
A program director at a large CRO Tell Clinical Research Strategy“I’ve been dancing around the fact that I don’t have a CRA, especially anyone who understands how to monitor difficult oncology trials. I can’t do that anymore.”
When clinical research professionals experience understaffed pressure, they are more likely to resign, creating a vicious cycle.
Staff shortages are also worrying patients. In a survey by the Urgent Care Institute, patients ranked staffing shortages and workers’ mental health as their top concerns. Two major medical safety issues. In another survey, 89% of nurses and paramedics A health system is concerned that staffing shortages will affect patient care. These concerns about clinical care can keep patients away from clinical trials and other life-saving treatments.
So how can clinical trial organizations protect patients and help their teams, even if they can’t afford to hire more staff?
How to Use Integrated Technologies to Address Staffing Shortages
Ideally, clinical trial organizations will be able to attract a lot of talent through incentives such as higher salaries or flexible working hours. But in reality, small sites or contract research organizations (CROs) don’t always offer pay raises, and patient and researcher needs often require staff to work long hours.
The huge mismatch between supply and demand of clinical trial professionals also means that not all organizations are able to find new employees, even at high salaries.
But each sponsor, CRO and site can empower regulators to make the most of their time. We need to give clinical trial professionals time to focus on what’s important—patient care—and time spent on repetitive data entry and document management.
question? Bulky or redundant technologies can increase rather than decrease workload.
For example, healthcare providers spend a disproportionate amount of their time —5 out of 8 clinical hours –Enter data into their Electronic Health Record (EHR). They then spent an additional 2.4 hours entering data after the work day.
Now think about the problem this creates for clinical researchers, who often use not only EHRs, but also Electronic Investigator Site File (eISF), Electronic Trial Master File (eTMF), Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) and many other programs , depending on the study.
The importance of integration
Integrated systems solve the problem of duplicate data entry. For example, if a site has a CTMS integrated with their eISF, they can enter data into one system and access it in another.
That’s why an open API system is so important. Systems with open APIs can be integrated even from different software companies, giving sites and sponsors the freedom to choose the system that works best for them.
The Importance of Remote Access Between Sites and Sponsors
Clinical research technology also needs to link the website to the sponsor. In the past, websites had to adopt new technical systems for each study, or upload files to multiple clunky sponsor portals.
A big resignation means the site doesn’t have enough staff to waste time repeating uploads. But monitoring personnel still need to be able to view the site’s documents and data online between monitoring visits.
solution? Field workers have access to software that can easily store documents and data. Instead of uploading their documents to the portal, they can then authorize sponsors to access the same system.
The ability to remotely access documents and data will save surveillance personnel hours or even days of travel time. CRAs can quickly check documents and data between on-site visits and spend on-site time focusing on participant safety and the needs of on-site staff. Not only does this help experiment more efficiently, but it also protects the CRA from exhaustion from over-travelling.
Overcoming the huge resignation of clinical research
Clinical trials cannot stop running because of staff shortages. But as clinical research professionals become more overworked due to these shortages, their burnout rates rise, creating even more turnover. Higher salaries, more flexible schedules and educational programs may help attract new people to clinical research. But as long as demand for clinical research professionals outstrips supply, shortages will persist.
This is where technology comes in. Dozens of complex, self-contained technological solutions do nothing to speed up clinical research. But some flexible, integrated systems for websites and sponsors can. Clinical research organizations need to search for these systems, and technology vendors need to create them.
Photo: Gordonkov, Getty Images
