The Work and Occupational Trajectories of Clinical Trials Research

Abstract

This paper revisits the concept of trajectory, as set out by Glaser and Strauss in 1965 and developed by others. Much of the research utilizing this concept has been focused on illness and the organization of work and biographies of participants involved in managing illness trajectories. The emphasis of this paper is not illness, but clinical trial research. It utilizes the concept of trajectory as a lens for this empirically grounded thick description of the occupational personnel and the work activities of clinical trials research. It draws on data collected in an ethnographic field study of informed consent and AIDS clinical trials. Social scientists and clinicians are involved in the implementation of clinical trials and in the transfer and utilization of knowledge and interventions derived there from. Therefore, this paper seeks to contribute to scholarship on this complex field of practice.

Therapeutic Discourse Among Nurses and Physicians in Controlled Clinical Trials

“…The original work focused on AIDS clinical trials and also employed an ethnographic field research design. [10][11][12][13] As an interpretive method directed towards the understanding of natural processes and phenomena, 14 ethnographic field research concerns the actions, meaning and context of the subject under investigation. 15 The field setting for our study was an outpatient research unit lodged within the gastroenterology department of a large research-oriented medical center, where randomized, placebo-controlled HCV clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies were conducted.…”

“Like a nurse but not a nurse”: Clinical Research Practitioners and the evolution of the clinical research delivery workforce in the NHS

“…Drawing on a study conducted in the late 1990s, Mueller describes the seven types of occupational workers she observed as being involved in the day-to-day management of clinical trials [26]. Included on this list is a category she calls ‘Data Managers’ described as “ support personnel ” primarily engaged with tasks such as “ organising trial materials, maintaining clinical research records, updating and monitoring patient databases, ordering study medication, responding to sponsor initiated queries, scheduling and coordinating patient appointments, and readying the site for sponsor monitoring visits ” [26]. Notably, Mueller observed that “ on occasion data managers interacted with patients, assuming some of what nurses referred to as routine protocol appointments ”.…”