The Impact on CRAs
The “Big Quit” (aka the Great Resignation) is everywhere and certainly impacting clinical trials. The impact was felt over the last few years with forced lockdowns yet, when you look at clinicaltrials.gov a record 37K new studies were added in 2021 alone. This brings the total number of active studies to over 400K. -1
The industry is booming, but not everything is smooth sailing. This article in Clinical Leader -2 is full of stories detailing the good and bad experiences of working in clinical research. From the 700+ CRAs and managers that contributed to the survey, a major theme is that many are experiencing insane workloads as CRAs and management are trying to keep on top of multiple studies from different sponsors and are managing many sites. CRAs report feelings of despair and frustration that lead to burnout.
Management continues to assign them more work because there isn’t enough capacity to meet demand, and pressure for updates from the sponsors do not let up. Sites are struggling to keep up with turnover and increased workloads. Without a streamlined method of managing capacity, it’s not a surprise that 80% of studies are late and CRA turnover is 30% and growing -3. Today’s solutions are more aspirational than helpful, and often fall short in application. “Just work smarter” is the mantra and promoting a culture of work-life balance are well intended but seemingly are unattainable when today’s demand out-paces capacity.
Adding to the mounting frustration, when CRAs travel to sites, they often end up working on other studies as there may be very little work to accomplish at that particular location on that day. Could this available capacity be flexed more dynamically to help overworked and overstressed CRAs?
How On-Time Trials can help CRAs
On-Time Trials help Sponsors and CROs reduce CRA turnover by right-sizing their monitoring capabilities to meet studies’ demand. Based on machine learning and years of real-world evidence, our platform’s algorithms are designed to quickly uncover hidden bottlenecks and trigger alerts that guide Management & CRA actions.
By accurately calculating the demand on CRAs’ time and balancing it with supply, OTT helps ensure CRAs allow enough time during their site visits for both data verification and regulatory work in order to avoid failed audits. OTT also works with centralized remote teams and can configure the system to issue verification alerts to optimize their timing.
Reducing burnout for CRAs
OTT’s platform with its intelligent motion chart analytics and intelligent alerts process will help your trials to complete on time and help to reduce burnout in clinical research teams.
Solutions for better monitoring can be found at https://ontimetrials.com/about-features/
Please contact us here to learn more trevor.coughlan@ontimetrials.com
Linked in – https://www.linkedin.com/company/ontimetrials/?viewAsMember=true
References
- Clinicaltrials.gov Trends, Charts and Maps here
- CRA Burnout : How Big a problem is it, really? here
- 2019/2020 INSIGHTS REPORT: CRO INDUSTRY Turnover Escalates While Compensation Levels and Practices Remain Status Quo here