How to stop worrying and start working in clinical trials

February 8, 2019

A few months ago, I left my three years’ marketing job in the automotive industry and started a new exciting journey at Flex Databases, eClinical software developer.

Hard start in the clinical research world

I knew that clinical research is complicated from my interviews and some research, so I decided to start learning during my notice period. Good Clinical Practice became my very first piece of related literature. After a fascinating evening of reading, I felt fresh off the boat. I was buried under an avalanche of abbreviations, terms, effective dates. I was terrified.

Monitor is a human, not a desktop

Notice period passed, I’ve read a few more books and searched some websites and arrived both ready and smashed to my first day. It was the moment when I met our e-clinical platform, and most importantly, for me, as a clinical trials beginner, our Learning Management System (LMS).
During my first weeks, LMS became a start-with-in-the-morning thing for me – everything I needed was there, all training materials and SOPs. When you start a job in a new industry, it is easy to make dozens of rookie mistakes. I felt somehow stupid when I discovered that the monitor was a human, not a desktop. I got to know that I don’t have to worry about effective dates – if there is an SOP change, I will get a notification from the system. I don’t have to worry about missing anything important in my training – learning materials for my position were predefined in the system. I also got access to other useful but unnecessary materials like soft skills training when I had time to browse it.
My other big relief, together with LMS, was regulator websites. If you’re new to clinical trials – I highly recommend you browse through them.

And here we are

By the end of my training, I was ready and excited. I left my smashed terrifying feeling behind. There are three main reasons for this: our amazing team, high training materials, and an automated LMS.
At the end of this piece of personal experience, I would say that I think every new employee in any company passes the same path as I did, one way or another. Software like our LMS is usually promoted as a big help for a company from a managerial side or in case of audits and inspections – but it also makes a life of an employee easier.