The third stop on my journey brought me to the much mistrusted corporate evil. At least that seems to be the general perception. I became a study investigator. Again I landed in this place by mouth to mouth propaganda. It was a usual winter evening. Very quiet. I went for diner and playing games at a friend’s place, who just got a baby. It was me, her, her former tinder date and respective father, but that is a different story, and another girl. Nothing special. We had some wine, tea and tiramisu and enjoyed the warmth of the cosy room while it was cold outside.
At that time I was thinking to maybe go to film school, maybe do some culture related research, anything that was far away from the hospital. Everybody knew I was looking for flexible jobs. I connected to the other friend, whom I did not know before. She was a doctor too, liked arts and still worked on her doctoral thesis in ethics. We got along well. And she had a job, flexible in hours with some security at a research department conducting phase 1 studies for pharma companies. They were looking for someone to expand the team.
My first reaction was hot and cold but I got in touch with the boss and decided to meet him for a talk. At least I could try to be open. We met for a coffee in a cafe. Subjects varied between philosophy, arts, research, neurosciences, virtual reality and film. It was actually very inspiring and the most informal application interview that ever happened to me. Furthermore they offered a quiet good salary, some security as it was not freelance but a 16h weekly contract and a great deal of flexibility. Still there were doubts. Was it ethical? Was it really what I liked? Wasn’t it too much into medicine? It would not help me in specialisation or career-wise at all. But somehow it felt good for now and maybe I had to look into it in more detail to be able to judge.
The upcoming weeks I visited the department a couple of times to join in different shifts and see if I liked the work. One thing was apparent already at the gate: clocks were ticking at a tiny fraction of the pace that they were running in the hospital. Everything was regulated to a point that would make the most severe OCDer have the time of his life.
After a couple of weeks I attended a 2 day course on good clinical practice, which I found hard paying attention to but passed with a bit of common sense, I guess. I signed more documents in the first two weeks than the first 30 years of my life. I even had to read (and sign) a standard operating procedure on standard operating procedures. The amount of bureaucracy stood head and shoulders above any former communistic government on earth. But at the same time it seemed to calm people down. Everybody was friendly, smiling, helpful and happy to chat. Again it felt good somehow.
The team is very close, they even organise small weekend trips together. And once you get over the introduction, I think the work is quiet nice. Most of the time you work with healthy subjects. You are somewhat doing medical work as you perform physical examinations, blood tests and basic ECG analysis. They never had an emergency, which is of course a lucky fact, even though I might miss it sometimes. You do learn a lot about study design and clinical research of course. And the results and findings are interesting to know.
In the end it does not seem unethical really. We do need clinical trials for development and validation of new substances or important interactions. It is something we all have benefit from. There is a clear advantage of the accuracy they perform. It is very precise in any step. Not only was every button of the vital signs monitor exactly explained to me. They do it for the subjects too. Informed consent is not mere phantasy.
For me it is good for the moment. It gives me freedom and security at the same time. And I met interesting people, too. You will here some of their stories later on.
DocSpiration 