The Clinical Research Workforce

Jim, tell us a little bit about yourself and your work at ACRP.
I started my career at Eli Lilly for 24 years before moving to Quintiles, now known as IQVIA, for 5 years. After spending the following five years consulting, I became the executive director for ACRP.

ACRP recently released some data on the state of the clinical trial workforce. I want to dive into what that data revealed. What trends are you seeing in clinical research career opportunities right now?
Recent trends in clinical research career opportunities include a disproportionate growth rate of clinical studies compared to the size of the workforce. We believe strongly that we need to close this gap to get therapies to market as quickly as possible.

What might a typical career path look like for someone entering the clinical research industry? Do you need to have a scientific background to be successful in clinical research?
Right now, I'm not sure there is a typical career path. Most people who end up in clinical research typically come into their positions by chance. That lack of clarity in career entrance and development is a huge problem.

In previous episodes, we’ve heard about the importance of recruiting diverse patients for clinical research. Can you speak on the importance of having a diverse workforce in clinical research as well?
We feel like we can kill two birds with one stone so to speak. Growing the diversity of the workforce can in turn grow the diversity of those enrolled in clinical trials.

What are the potential consequences of clinical trial growth outpacing clinical trial employment?
A potential consequence of the outpace in growth between clinical studies and the workforce in clinical studies is that we won’t have enough people to conduct studies to the extent that we need them to. This will be a bottleneck in the development pipeline.

What can sites, sponsors or CROs do to encourage interest in joining the clinical research industry?
The more variance you have, the more likely you are to have poor quality, and unfortunately that’s the case in clinical research now. It’s critical that we begin defining competencies for positions in our industry. When we gain industry alignment around these competencies, we can begin to train individuals on them, and then validate that people actually have them. This is the only area in healthcare where there are no real standardized requirements or competencies. We need to change that.