Remote Experienced Clinical Research Data Coordinators
The Great Resignation. The Big Quit. The Great Reshuffle.
This issue began during COVID-19 when site employees resigned from their jobs everywhere. The long-lasting job dissatisfaction paired with wage stagnation only made things worse. Today, we are seeing the highest rate of resignation in health care ever, which means fewer resources now more than ever. This downward spiral has caused sites to put a hold on new studies, function with 70-80% of regulatory staff, and start studies without even a CRC identified.
We took the time to interview a few sites and sponsors and here is what they are saying:
· “ I am only down to 25% in CRCs – have 4 lost one (the Lead) but also lost physicians. Need help with start-up since this was done by the University. We are drowning.”
· “Research staff is down 40% - we have managers answering the phones. We had 6 studies in the start-up process and stopped. We had to turn them all down. We have not opened any new studies in 6 months. Some of our sites lost physicians, some lost staff, but everyone is overloaded. This is our biggest challenge.”
· “Staff are being hired without research experience making the training curve super steep. You can’t find oncology experience so new hires are learning 2 jobs at the same time – research and oncology.”
· “We are so spread thin that as a CTM I am having to complete CTA and Lab personnel duties since we don’t have the resources. We need another third-party client that we can count on to assist us with getting in the data along with following up with the sites for other ad-hoc requests.”
If the above isn't enough, check out the latest article published by ACRP on September 27, 2022 highlighting the shear CRC scarcity in our industry. Website: rb.gy/br8jp0