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As clinical trials face a hiring crunch, here’s how research organizations can pivot

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Many companies are looking to hire these days, but are finding that few candidates are walking through the door. Clinical trial sites are no exception, particularly when it comes to filling open clinical research associate (CRA) positions.

“Rather than at entry level, we are observing that the shortage is more pronounced at the experienced CRA levels. This trend became apparent during, and continued after, the COVID pandemic,” said Helen Yeardley, senior vice president of global clinical operations at ICON, a global contract research organization (CRO). Trials are also struggling to fill other roles related to site start-up, clinical trial management, clinical operations management and data management, she said.

Professional headshot of Helen Yeardley

Helen Yeardley, SVP, global clinical operations, ICON

Permission granted by ICON

 

The pandemic may have exacerbated staffing shortages, but structural weaknesses existed well before it began. In 2015, the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) described brewing problems in a report. At the time there were some 10,000 open CRA positions in the U.S. and no signs of improvement on the horizon.

“The shortage is creating inefficiencies for clinical trial sponsors and (CROs), many of whom find themselves in a constant recruitment cycle for qualified CRAs in a hyper-competitive job market,” report authors wrote.

The report authors noted that a third of CRAs who responded to a 2015 CenterWatch/ACRP survey said they planned to leave their jobs within a year, citing factors such as ever-growing responsibilities and a heavy workload that made it hard to attain a work/life balance.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and on its heels, the mass exodus of workers often referred to as the “great resignation.”

It’s a challenge that’s been tracked by the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS). According to the group, in the first two quarters of 2022, the largest proportion of CRAs giving notice were those with more than 10 years of experience — a reversal of past trends where less experienced workers were more likely to resign.

“The current resignation rate of employees with a five-to-10-year tenure is 60% higher than in 2020. For employees with a 10-15 year tenure, it was 55% higher in 2021 than in the same period of 2020,” according to SCRS.  

SCRS, citing data from Career Builder, also said that there are only 5.7 million people available for hire in the clinical research arena — but 6.6 million open jobs in the field.

Despite these stats, some question whether it’s really a shortage of experienced CRAs or merely a result of how their workplace operates. High-performing CRAs rarely scour the want ads, but rather move from job to job within the same organizations or use word-of-mouth referrals. In some instances, job openings may be artificially inflated by companies fishing for applicants without an actual opening to fill. Additionally, some jobs may stay vacant because the companies advertising them have earned a reputation as challenging to work for. 

Still, Yeardley notes that the pressure on clinical trial professionals appears to have intensified, as demand for highly skilled CRAs has skyrocketed.

“As more complicated scientific assets and/or targeted therapies are developed, the clinical trial data volume has risen in scale and complexity,” Yeardley said. “We have also seen a significant increase in the number of sites and patients, which is in part due to the increase in trial patient sizes since the early 1990s. This requires more monitoring time, despite efforts to move to SDR (source data review) versus SDV (source data verification),” Yeardley said.

Improving the hiring pool

Staffing struggles may delay new studies from opening, drive up costs, and make it more difficult to meet regulatory and other study requirements. What can companies do to help ease the current staffing crunch?

“Constructively, a lot of organizations — CROs, pharmas and biotechs alike — decided to invest in a grow-your-own strategy,” Yeardley said. “This meant taking on less experienced staff, training and mentoring them, developing training and simulation programs, and overseeing them to a level at which they were able to monitor independently. This is a significant investment and will take time to alleviate the shortage, but we are seeing progress in the right direction.”

ICON is leveraging several strategies to cultivate a more robust workforce, Yeardley said.

“The focus is on attracting candidates who can quickly evolve to a CRA role from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and ensuring they receive training and support tailored to their circumstances, and to the stage of their career,” she said.

The company also tailors training programs to each CRA’s needs.


“Having started as a CRA myself, I know firsthand the career opportunities that working as a CRA can unlock.”

Helen Yeardley

SVP, global clinical operations, ICON


“Each of these offer a comprehensive curriculum, including online and best-in-class instructor-led training workshops to lay the foundational knowledge of clinical research. Importantly, these also include hands-on experience in the form of accompanied site visits, mock visits, simulation visits, and individually tailored coaching, mentoring and skills development,” Yeardley said.

The goal is to help CRAs not only attain the technical expertise they need, but also those crucial soft skills that help them forge strong working relationships with sites.

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