Read on for a day in the life of a clinical research coordinator
Job Title: Senior Clinical Research Coordinator
Industry: Clinical Research
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Salary/Benefits: $60,000 per year
Employer Type: Small for-profit private family owned business
Employer Size: 12 employees
How Long in Current Position: 4 years
Highest Level of Education: Bachelors
Path to This Job: My undergrad degree is in anthropology and biology. I decided I wanted a different job my junior year of college and kind of randomly got the next job that would let me work nights and weekends, and it turned out to be a research assistant job with the Department of Family Medicine. I knew lots about how you develop drugs, but nothing about what happens in between inventing the drug and how it gets on the pharmacy shelf – that’s where clinical research comes in.
A typical day at work:
8:00-8:30: I generally get to work between 8 and 8:30. My job is very different day to day depending on my patient load and what kind of trials I have.
How I spend my day:
- Usually I have patient visits in the morning.
- My patients schedule directly with me, so I can make my own schedule in a way.
- If these are returning patients, the visits are generally shorter. I’ll take their blood pressure, get someone to draw blood, collect urine samples if needed, ask them about how their health has been since the last time I saw them, give them new bottles/syringes of medication, collect their medication diaries, and administer any other procedures that need to be done at that visit (questionnaires, EKG, etc.)
- If they’re new patients, I’ll usually spend two to three hours with them, going over what the study is about, what they can expect, etc., and then taking a full medical/surgical history, list of medications, etc.
- I spend about 15 hours a week with patients and the rest doing paperwork or solving various problems. Each study site is given a protocol (which is usually thick on the medical/statistical part and thin on operational details) that guides us in conducting the study, but there’s still lots of little pieces to coordinate.
4:30: I don’t work weekends, and I rarely work after 5. I do check my email after hours sometimes. I recently had a baby and am on a 3 day a week work schedule but previously worked Monday-Friday, 8 to 4:30.
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