Perhaps you're a little restless with your current work as a healthcare professional, wishing you could find a new focus or add responsibility without leaving your current job. One of the interesting part-time opportunities that you could potentially do on evenings or weekends is working in clinical research trials, helping researchers who need a team to meet with research subjects and administer the protocol accurately to get the best possible data.

Let's look at how to get involved in clinical research and participate in research studies as a healthcare professional.

The world of medical research is constantly advancing, but breakthroughs often feel like they come slower than we would prefer. However, participating in research can help push research further. While we want excellent research with clear outcomes, research takes time and a lot of personnel. One of the best ways to ensure that clinical research proceeds quickly, bringing lifesaving treatment plans to the world, is by hiring excellent, well-trained staff. A significant error in managing a research project would delay and muddy the findings, so great training is one of the most crucial factors in creating this work.

As it turns out, training in clinical research is also a great way to widen job opportunities for people with biology and research backgrounds or who already work in the medical field. If you've considered how to participate in research studies and get involved in clinical, read on to see how it happens in a flexible, online, or hybrid setting.

Sheldon Levy, PhD, MPH is an instructor in the RCC-Institute for Health Professionals Foundations of Clinical Research. 

Medical treatments go through rigorous testing before approval because doctors, patients, and all relevant parties want to know they can rely on those treatments.

Indeed, there are occasional side effects and reasons why someone isn't the right fit for the treatment, but medical professionals must know the exceptions before approving treatments for broader use. So how do they ensure that their clinical trials effectively give them the information they need to rely on the treatments down the road?

One of the significant ways to ensure they collect sound data is through diverse applicants in their clinical research studies. Having applicants from all walks of life helps increase confidence in the treatment's effectiveness across all people. If there are disparities in clinical results, such as different outcomes for one gender versus another, doctors and patients must have that information before opting into the final version of the treatment. Diverse trials can help researchers adjust the formulation and timing of a treatment to create a final protocol that works as well as possible for many people.

The pandemic brought the world of clinical research front and center. It made more people learn about testing new medical treatments ethically and thoroughly. Every health treatment and innovation needs proper testing to understand its complexity and how people from all backgrounds respond to the procedure or medication. Growing treatment options and medical necessity makes clinical research an essential and expanding field.

An excellent example of how clinical research education can help is in the world of research recruitment. Recruiting diverse populations for clinical trials is integral to getting reliable data from the results of such trials. Let's explore how this process tends to occur.

Many people envision that college classes are for significant shifts, from being in high school into a career for the first time or from one field into a different field. However, Portland Community College hosts various programs that help trained and educated professionals move to the next level within their fields or expand their job responsibilities. 

A great example is the collaborative work within the Foundations of Clinical Research program. This program is offered once a year, with more limited enrollment. Most medical professionals in this program are already registered nurses or have even higher credentials but are looking into how to participate in research studies or how to get involved in clinical research conducted at their hospitals or other healthcare settings.

Let's dive in and see how this program helps professionals expand their skills and widen their career opportunities, even mid-career! 

Meet Your Instructor: Yashodhan “Yash” Khajanchee, M.B.B.S., MS, MCR
Yash Khajanchee was born in India, where he went to Medical School and completed his training in general surgery in 1996. In 1999, he was offered a research fellowship in Minimally Invasive Surgery at Legacy Institute of Minimally Invasive Surgery in Portland, Oregon.

Kinjal Mistry was trained in pharmacy and pharmacology in India before moving to the United States in 2019. Mistry sought an affordable path to using her past training paired with a deep interest in research. She discovered an outlet for both passions with PCC's Clinical Research program. We recently sat down with her to learn more about her experience - you can learn more about her journey below! 

Developing new programs at Portland Community College's Institute for Health Professionals requires understanding the needs of Portland’s health industry. One particular area of the industry experiencing high turnover, expensive training, and a lack of qualified applicants: clinical researchers and clinical research assistants. The IHP team went to work and built its online clinical research program, offered during the spring.