Written by Nikki Blythe, Member of the UKTMN Training Subgroup and Trial Manager, University of Bristol
Firstly, we would like to express our thanks to those who completed the training survey sent out in November 2024. The training subgroup have reviewed your responses and are using these to guide the planning of future UKTMN training opportunities.
Who responded?
We were delighted that 247 people from all over the UK responded to the survey. Trial managers made up nearly half of respondents (47%), 26% were senior trial managers, 8% were trial coordinators, 5% were trial assistants and 15% were ‘other’ roles (e.g. team lead, operational lead, programme manager). The majority of survey respondents (41%) had over 9 years of experience in a trial management role, 28% of people had 4-9 years of experience and 31% had less than 3 years of experience.
What you told us
We provided a list of our current training opportunities and asked members to inform us of which sessions they would be interested in attending, to assess demand. The results from this part of the survey will help us to ensure that we provide enough opportunities for members to attend the sessions they need the most.
The percentage of respondents who would be interested in the following training sessions are listed below, in order of popularity:
- Principles of costing a trial (74%)
- Managing international trials (62%)
- Project management (60%)
- Working with NHS England (60%)
- Introduction to grant writing (54%)
- Recruitment and retention (49%)
- How to be a good trial manager (42%)
- Introduction to statistics for trial management (41%)
We also asked members to let us know which other topics they felt it was important that we provide training for. Key themes, in order of frequency, were:
- Quality Assurance (including monitoring, risk management and safety reporting)
- Regulatory approvals and updates
- Data management (general principles of data management and using routine data)
- Contracting
- PPI activities
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (general principles and practical implementation)
- Creating trial documents
- Sample and IMP management
Update on current training opportunities
Principles of costing a trial – this course will be run again in May 2025, and registration will open very soon! Although the timing of this course may change in future years, we’re delighted to work with experienced trial management professionals and a representative from the NIHR Research Delivery Network to deliver this course.
Project management – The project management course provided by Pharmaschool was recently delivered in person in Birmingham in December 2024. Due to a high percentage of respondents scoring this course as a session they would like to attend, we will work with the training lead to arrange for a new date to be scheduled for 2025. We expect this to be delivered in person.
Working with NHS England – This topic was previously covered by a free online session in November 2023. We are liaising with NHS England to secure a second session. We will be in touch when further details are available.
Introduction to grant writing – This course has been run multiple times and we have received positive feedback from attendees; it was last delivered in January 2025. There is currently a priority place list in operation, so we will work with the teaching group to arrange a date in January 2026 for this session to be repeated.
Recruitment and retention – this course hasn’t been run since 2022 due to teaching resources, but in the past, we received positive feedback from attendees. We have identified a replacement tutor for this session and worked on making content updates. It will be held again in May 2025. More information will soon be available on our EVENTS PAGE.
How to be a good trial manager – We are running this again in April 2025; this course is popular each year, and all places have now been taken but please let us know if you would like to join the waiting or priority list and you will be contacted if space becomes available or when the next course is organised.
Introduction to statistics for trial management – This training is provided in collaboration with the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit. This was last delivered during November 2024 and will be rerun online across two consecutive half-days on 6 & 7 November 2025. Registration is now available via our EVENT PAGE.
How we are using the results of the survey to develop future opportunities
Following your feedback on which other training you feel would be valuable for UKTMN members, we have begun to review each theme in turn and explore possibilities of arranging provision for training. Training in a particular topic may not be suitable to be delivered as a formal taught course, so we also take time to consider if a topic could be covered by a webinar, an online event or if external training opportunities are already available, in which case we will make sure to sign-post relevant information for members.
As a topic which has been reported as an unmet training need is ‘managing international trials’, we are continuing to develop an in-house training course centred on this and are currently working on the format and content. We will be in touch with details about this soon and hope to have this topic available later this year.
Training in quality assurance was the topic brought up most frequently in the free-text box of the survey so this a focus of the group’s planning and we are discussing the possibility of developing a UKTMN training course.
Data management including accessing and using routine data was another common theme from the survey responses. A member of the training group helped connect us to the TOP-CAT team in Cardiff, who are working on developing training and resources already. We have joined forces, and the team will be delivering a free online ROUTINE HEALTHCARE DATA session on 25 March 2025.
PPI activities and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are key topics which members are keen to learn more about and, for both topics, we plan to hold online events where trial management professionals are invited to share their experiences and knowledge via short presentations. We are also looking into the training resources provided by external providers to help members have access to a range of learning tools.
For certain topics, such as regulatory approvals and updates, the training subgroup feel that there are various resources already created (e.g. HRA e-learning modules) but we plan to ensure that our signposting to relevant resources is up to date so that members are aware of what is available from external providers.
We are looking forward to continuing to work together to provide UKTMN members with interesting, impactful and valuable training.
Want to find out more?
There is more information available on our TRAINING RESOURCE page about the current courses we offer and external opportunities that we are aware of. We encourage you to let us know if you have attended a training session or used useful resources for learning which you would recommend for trial management professionals. This will help us to share the most useful information with members.
If you have any questions about the survey, or UKTMN training in general, then please email us at [email protected]
