r/clinicalresearch

As the title said, what are the biggest clinical research questions for Orthopaedic surgery that need further investigation?

I have now been laid off three times since March of 2025. This industry has never been as enjoyable as i thought it would be. Management is toxic as hell. Unrealistic standards with little to no training. Terrible communication between teams and management and i am completely done. I feel like i don’t even want to look for another job in this field and want to focus more on myself and working in yoga and pilates. Luckily im trained for both. I’m so discouraged since i went to school for this but i just cannot do it anymore.

Hello , i missed adding a screening question to screen participants for our behavioral intervention. This happened once and i caught the mistake and reported it to PI . We were able to fix it. Now we screened more than 50 participants and 10 of them are eligible. When i was checking my questionnaire i realized one of the questions is missing again. I will be reporting it to PI . I am really worried that PI dint catch my errors both the times. The work load has been really high and i am making these mistakes. I take full accountability for my mistakes. Is calling eligible participants to ask that one question valid ? They have signed the consent forms already. Would it be a protocol deviation? . Can i make an IRB amendment to collect data on that one single question.

I am a CTM at a CRO and I got an offer for a senior CTM at a top level sponsor. I joined the CRO at a good time so I’ve always had a higher salary, the sponsor offered less but I negotiated to at least match the current salary even though the new role is more senior. I accepted the role a few days ago and waiting for a contact now

Would I be too greedy or pushing my luck if I also asked for a signing bonus?

Hi,
Does someone please list down all the documents that are required during Pre clinical trail , during ongoing trail and post trail like (IB , CSR , Protocol, SAP ) and so on .
i need the whole list and in proper order

I’m curious about this from both a general and personal perspective:

If you’ve participated in a clinical trial, how was your experience in terms of trust, information, and support?

If you haven’t, what would influence your decision to join or not join one?

More broadly, what do you think builds or reduces trust in medical research today, past experiences, transparency, side effects, representation, media, or something else?

Hi everyone- just wanted to give a heads up on something that happened with me.

On Friday I got an email from a recruiter from a sponsor for a Senior CRA position to which I responded that I was interested.

The recruiter asked for my resume and quickly came back to me and said I should connect with a resume consultant (red flag). I said I would be happy to and they sent me the email address for the consultant. The email address ended with @gmail which immediately made me realize exactly what’s going on.

I checked the recruiter email and lo and behold it was not a real recruiter, this email also ended with @gmail, and was posing as a specific person from this company.

After acting as if I was going through with the resume writer, they were going to charge over $500 to “help me” rewrite my resume.

Luckily I didn’t lose any money, but I did read about some people who did so please be cautious and confirm all the details before doing anything!

Hi everyone, after years of hard work as a CRC, I’ve finally landed my first position at IQVIA! I will be starting soon as a FSP CRA for a not-so-fun to work with sponsor but I’m excited nonetheless. How would my first 3 months on the job look like? I understand that there would be CRA school but how is that like? Is it just online modules or would I get a chance to shadow other CRAs between online learning? Any insight and details would be appreciate!:) thank you in advance and love you

Hey All,

Im a PM at a CRO. I've never left the company I started with over a decade ago and I'm looking at finally jumping ship. Actively interviewing right now so fingers crossed...however since I've never left a corporate job before I just assumed I was supposed to give 2 weeks notice. I know that technically 2 weeks isn't a ton of time for transitions and although I'm in an incredibly toxic situation right now I don't want to burn bridges. Is 2 weeks industry standard or is more time expected?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, I work in CRO that was spun off recently from bigger Lab, recently I'm seeing my coworkers and previous friends are migrating to new orgs with atleast 30-40% hikes and I'm kind of underpaid for my experience (joined a lower role). This makes me compare with them and feel bad, I feel I have so much potential and can contribute more but my manager and scope of work here doesn't permit me to do so, I feel struck doing the same monotonous activity everyday and it's been atleast six months since I learnt anything new here.

The worst part is I am being made to do all the heavy lifting, all manual review part is allocated to me only, the other members get the programmed checks (reason being I'm more proactive and trustable). I don't feel valued enough or appreciated enough for my contributions nor am I given more responsibilities considering my skills.

It's been a year since I joined here, I promised my interviewer that he can trust me I will be here for atleast 2 years, also I don't want to hop within 1-2 years.

Please help me Seniors have you felt this way, what would you do if you were in my place.

My mother did a clinical trial for her blood cancer last year and was reimbursed for travel expenses of about $1,100 from the company running the trial. Why did she get a 1099-MISC for this amount? What is the logic that explains why this would be taxable? Thanks in advance.

How do you handle HIPAA and GDPR compliance when sharing visual patient data (like skin lesions or gait videos) with outside researchers?

I am trying to understand the process. Do you just manually blur faces in Premiere/Photoshop? Do you just avoid sharing it entirely? How much of a bottleneck is this?

What if there were a platform where founders could showcase their startup ideas to attract talented people, while individuals interested in startups could explore projects across different domains and join teams that match their interests and skills?

We're currently conducting market research for a platform aimed at solving these challenges, and we'd genuinely appreciate your thoughts.

If you've ever built a startup, wanted to join one, or have experience in the startup ecosystem, your insights would be incredibly valuable.

Please share your honest opinions, experiences, and suggestions in the comments

More of a vent because it’s the weekend and this issue is lingering in my head.

One of my sites is pushing back on a sponsor training requirement.
From the site’s perspective, I get it. Too many different CRO/sponsor requirements. But I also don’t get it because by agreeing to participate in the study, sites are also agreeing to comply with the sponsor’s study requirements. Sites know what they are signing up for during the feasibility and selection process.

Just a classic case of bait and switch. Nonetheless, still frustrating to deal with on top of all the other fires I’m trying to put out 😭

During a monitoring visit, the CRA identified what appeared to be the PI’s signature being written by our lead CRC/manager on an essential regulatory document. The CRA asked me directly about it, and he said it was serious and would have to be escalated.
There is no independent HR or compliance department at my site, and I’m worried about retaliation if I report it myself.
If the CRA says he’s escalating it, should I just let the sponsor/CRO handle it, or do I have an obligation to report it elsewhere if nothing happens?
Has anyone dealt with something similar?

Hi everyone. I'm hoping this is a good place to ask for some perspective because I'm struggling to understand how my organization is handling a situation involving study drug/IP management.

For context, I work as a regulatory coordinator for a division of a large research institution that supports clinical trials at community clinics that don't have their own research departments. Our department provides the research infrastructure remotely, while designated nurses at the clinics assist with study procedures under the guidance of our coordinators.

Historically, IP for these community sites was shipped by sponsors to our institution's research pharmacy. The pharmacy received the shipments, maintained IP accountability, dispensed the drug, and shipped pre-dispensed medication to the community clinics for subjects' upcoming visits.

The pharmacy identified several concerns with this process, including that they remained responsible for the drug while it was outside of their control during transit, and there was limited site-level documentation of receipt and dispensing. They also informed us in October 2025 that they would no longer support these community sites because they interpret institutional policy to apply only to studies conducted within our own institution—not at partner clinics that belong to other health systems.

To me, the next step seemed straightforward: transition IP management to the pharmacies at the community sites by onboarding their pharmacy staff as key personnel, training them on study procedures and IP accountability, and updating sponsors with the new shipping locations. The issue with that is that some sponsors would only ship IP to one location, and several of our studies are OTA at more than one location. In this case, we could only have IP shipped to our main office, but that would require our remote coordinators to receive shipments at the office and transport them to the sites, which is a lot of work and travel that would necessarily take away time from other study activities where we needed them.

Its now more than eight months later and no operational changes have been initiated. Rather than developing an alternative workflow, leadership has only said they are trying to convince the research pharmacy to continue supporting these sites. Updates have been infrequent and generally amount to waiting for responses to emails, with little indication that contingency planning is happening.

This feels concerning to me because responsibility for IP is such a fundamental part of study operations, and the uncertainty has continued for months.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? Does this timeline seem reasonable, or would you have expected leadership to pursue parallel solutions while discussions with the research pharmacy continued? I'd really appreciate any insight from others, especially anyone who experienced something similar.

Any advice for someone trying to break into clinical research? I’ve applied to so many entry-level roles and can’t even get an interview.

My background: I have a Bachelor’s in Health Science and almost 10 years as a Certified Pharmacy Technician. Six of those years have been in a hospital-based oncology setting where I prepare and verify chemotherapy daily. we’re also a satellite site for clinical trials, so I have direct exposure to protocol-driven workflows, investigational drug handling, and regulatory documentation standards.

I also have:
— A completed GCP certification through the NIDA Clinical Trials Network (NIH funded, May 2026)
— Strong regulatory compliance and audit readiness experience
— Experience with SOP development, corrective action planning, and compliance documentation
— Epic Willow EHR expertise

I’ve applied to CRC, CTA, study startup, regulatory coordinator, and patient recruitment roles at CROs like IQVIA, PPD, Centricity, and OneOncology with no interviews. I know pharmacy isn’t direct research experience but the skills feel genuinely transferable.

Specific questions:

1. Is my GCP certification strong enough or do I need CCRP/CCRC?
2. Are there specific role titles I should be targeting that I’m missing?
3. Is there anything obvious I’m doing wrong with my applications?
4. Would a temp or contract CRC role be a better entry point than applying to permanent positions?

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Why the change? What impact has this made other than its got more syllables?

Are there more clinical trials now globally?

Applied 300-400+ apps since Jan in NJ/NYC area. 1 rejection. Everything else = ghosted.

Please do better.