Time for a proper career pathway for clinical trial managers?
Results of the UKTMN job family survey
E. J. Mitchell, E. Campbell, K. Goodman, J. Taylor, N. F. J. Youssouf & N. Wakefield on behalf of the U. K. Trial Managers’ Network Executive Group
For UKTMN members based in a university, you might remember completing an online survey a while back, telling us about the career pathway/job family you’re employed on and what you think are the pros and cons of this pathway. This focused on trial managers in universities, but we will be doing more work on roles within the NHS in the near future.
Most university-based trial managers are employed on either a ‘professional services’ pathway or a ‘research’ pathway and it’s clear that there are advantages and disadvantages to both. It’s also clear from our survey that everyone is different, and what works for one trial manager, doesn’t work for another.
What is clear, is that people want to feel valued and recognised for the important work they do. We argue that universities should have a career pathway in place that is appropriate for trial management roles, so that if people want to, they can develop their careers and take on more senior roles that build on their specialist expertise. Not everyone wants to do this and, of course, that’s ok too – but we must support the trial managers who do, so we don’t lose their skills, knowledge and expertise, which is so vital to the clinical research landscape.