Martin booth
What do you do on a daily basis?
"Each day is completely different working in research, nothing is routine driven.
The most important thing is a review of emails to check for anything that needs resolving urgently; this may be an urgent data query from an industry sponsor so that a data lock can occur, to a reported Adverse Event which will require investigation and reporting to the study sponsor within a 24 hour period. Although this is rarely a daily occurrence these matters need to take priority.
Day to day I can go from arranging and following patients on research study, this may be a simple straight forward telephone conversation to a complex study visit involving neurocognitive assessments along with high quality data collection to ensure the research aims are met. These visit usually require input and assessment from the Principle Investigator (lead consultant) and additional support services (pharmacy, pathology, imaging).
Once the visit is complete I can hand the data and study visit information to our administration team to ensure all relevant visits are recorded on Edge and data is loaded to study databases in a timely manner. I can then move on to answering data queries for a completely different study, I may then need to review a new upcoming trial protocol that can include 300 plus pages, attend clinic to swab staff members for COVID screening as part of SIREN to screening potential eligible patients for research trails open to recruitment. Some days can be very data heavy working across multiple clinical and external systems."
Why do you enjoy your job?
The most enjoyable part of the job is seeing patients who are as passionate about taking part in research to improve future care and treatments.
What’s it like to be a part of the research team at UHNM?
The past 12 months have been a huge challenge, we all have been thrust in to a way of working completely alien with a disease that none of us understood. I can honestly say it has been the best 12 months from a perspective of working together and supporting each other as one team. I hope that these lessons learnt will carry us forward over the coming 12 months.
How important are clinical trials?
If COVID has proved anything it is that Clinical Trials and Research Studies should be at the forefront of all care and offered to all eligible patients as part of the standard care pathway. Without them we will never learn about diseases or find suitable treatments.