Clinical Research Roles

Started by mochi_
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mochi_

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How can you tell if clinical research opportunities allow for data analysis and authorship/publications rather than just administrative roles (like CRC)? Will there be job posts or is it something you have to cold email for, and are there specific titles like clinical research assistant/associate? Does it matter if it’s academic institution, smaller organization, or if it’s a hospital that’s conducting the clinical research that will allow for data analysis/authorship opportunities? I’m assuming any CRC role will usually be administrative and not data analysis, so I should avoid those.

Thank you!
 
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Where are you in the admissions process? Have you graduated and are looking for a gap year program while applying or wishing to work for a year or more before applying?

What skill set do you have that would qualify you to say that the study was conducted and the data analyzed appropriately? It's a rather high bar for clinical research.

What is your goal here?
 
mochi_ said:
How can you tell if clinical research opportunities allow for data analysis and authorship/publications rather than just administrative roles (like CRC)? Will there be job posts or is it something you have to cold email for, and are there specific titles like clinical research assistant/associate? Does it matter if it’s academic institution, smaller organization, or if it’s an a hospital that’s conducting the clinical research that will allow for data analysis/authorship opportunities? I’m assuming any CRC role will usually be administrative and not data analysis, so I should avoid those.

Thank you!
Click to expand...
You should ask the PI
 
LizzyM said:
Where are you in the admissions process? Have you graduated and are looking for a gap year program while applying or wishing to work for a year or more before applying?

What skill set do you have that would qualify you to say that the study was conducted and the data analyzed appropriately? It's a rather high bar for clinical research.

What is your goal here?
Click to expand...
Hi, thanks for giving me some things to think about! I’m an undergrad in my third year and was accepted through early assurance and not considering applying out, so I’m not considering this for anything related to the admissions process. I haven’t graduated yet/not planning a gap year, but I have a little less than 1.5 years before graduating/matriculating to explore things that I’m interested in (including this summer and next school year).

I was hoping to get my feet wet with clinical research since it’s been something I’ve been interested in but found to be hard to break into as an undergrad. I’ve enjoyed working with patients in my clinical experiences and the data analysis/writing side of wet lab research, so the data analysis side of clinical research was something that was more interesting to me than the administrative roles in CRC job descriptions. I understand being skeptical of what I can do as an undergrad, but I was just hoping to learn or at least be introduced to that side of clinical research.
 
Goro said:
You should ask the PI
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice! How would you recommend phrasing it when asking and is it asked during an interview/meeting or after joining a lab? Would asking if there are opportunities for data analysis/authorship be seen as shallow in any way? I’m afraid that it may come off the wrong way.
 
To be of any value to someone doing clinical research, you need to know a bit of study design and data analysis (epidemiology and biostatistics are graduate programs where this is generally taught). Can you wrangle data from an electronic data warehouse (medical records data for example) or can you be the student who creates a survey that asks the right questions in the right order, gets approved by the board that oversees human subjects research, recruits enough people to draw conclusions from the data, clean it (what do you do with missing data or typos like someone weighing 800 pounds) and write it into a paper. The toughest part is coming up with the question, the testable hypothesis. That sends you backwards into the literature on whatever topic interests you to see what other people have done and where they've left off with "more research is needed" which is how every one of these papers end.

Tons of these little projects get done by medical students who need a thesis. Meanwhile, most clinical research is either funded by the NIH or by industry and asks are patients better off with a combination of drugs A, B and C compared with A and B, where A+B is standard of care. There are bunches of laboratory tests, diagnostic imagining, follow-up for adverse events and longer disease free progression or improvement, or a slowing of decline, on the outcome of interest. The protocols are often written by consortiums of experts or pharmaceutical companies who are testing new compounds. If a college student or recent college graduate gets a job in such a study it might be limited to clerical work such as downloading and printing consent forms, scanning and uploading the forms, submitting forms to regulatory bodies and so forth. It won't come close to getting you published.

I have seen some people do some "research" in someplace like the emergency department where there are a few studies going on and the research assistants are on the prowl for conditions such as sports related traumatic brain injuries, older adults with altered mental status, and ectopic pregnancies. If one of those folks shows up, you see if they meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria and approach them for their consent. Maybe you ask some questions (collecting data). Maybe you collect some information from the chart. That sort of thing. Doesn't usually result in a publication for the recruiter who didn't have a say in study design or analysis or writing which is pretty much what is required for authorship. It is usually a job or a volunteer gig for a few months or a year. You get to do something more interesting and useful than putting blankets in the warmer and stocking shelves and you see how the emergency department works. Not saying that these jobs are common but I've seen them on applications.
 
One possibility worth looking into (Depending on your institution rules) is look into shadowing physicians in fields that interest you, then look into building those relationships out to get to research
 
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