CRA training: How NOT to conduct a site visit

Here’s an amusing look at a day in the life of a CRA (Clinical Research Associate) on a site visit. This video is a parody, but it does give you a sense of what site visits are all about.

A CRA may spend 60-80% of their time on the road conducting these visits.  Their job is to monitor the conduct of clinical trials, ensuring that research sites are enrolling patients and carrying out the trial correctly, following both the trial protocol and ICH-GCP conduct guidelines. They review a lot of documentation, check site supplies and generally watch out for problems.

When there are problems, a CRA needs to help get the clinical site staff back on the right track, and so they need to have excellent communication and negotiation skills.  It can take a lot of diplomacy to get clinical investigators and their staff to change the way they do things in a busy clinic!

The sound in the embedded clip isn’t synchronized quite right.  You can see a higher-quality version at the ResearchPoint site.  They are the CRO (Contract Research Organization) that created the video.

You can read more about what a CRA job is all about in this earlier article.


Posted: January 27th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Clinical research, Clinical Research Associates, Fun | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »


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