hey guys Ali clinical research group here today and today we're gonna be
talking about the most hated task in clinical research
hey guys so today we're gonna talk about the most hated test and clinical
research and you guys probably already know what I'm gonna be talking about
some of you may think you know what I'm talking about but you should definitely
know what I'm talking about if you work in clinical research it started from the
bottom the task is the meeting minutes there is no task worse a lot of you may
say TMF is worse because it's so tedious and so boring but I don't want to hear
that if any of you guys have taken meeting minutes you know meeting minutes
are for real the worst task in clinical research now I know a lot of you guys
might get on me because meeting minutes isn't specific to clinical research
other businesses use the meeting minute format as well but come on guys it's the
21st century we should be getting away from things like meeting minutes
doctor's dictate their notes other people dictate if when they have a long
list of things to do dictation increases the speed of
everything when you can say it and speak it it's so much faster like you're able
to get to this video so much faster than if I wrote a long blog post that would
take you minutes to go through for many minutes to go through now why would
people hate meeting minutes so much for those of you that are listening to this
video and don't know what the meeting minutes are so the meeting minutes in
Clinical Research there's a time when there's a big meeting either
internal-external or a CRA or CMA phone call
where either the CTA or the project specialist the project coordinator
normally assists an assistant of some kind will take notes on what happened
during the meeting so ordinarily that doesn't sound too bad because it's just
notes this should be good go pretty smoothly especially depending on how
long the meeting is but the problem is the people that are in charge of the
meeting and doing the most talking during the meeting aren't taking into
consideration that there's somebody having to take notes on all this and to
top it off a lot of the meetings aren't even recorded so you can go back later
and catch what you miss in the sponsor minutes
the internal minutes can always be recorded usually and that makes it a
little bit easier for you to have to go back and listen to the recording again
so you can take your notes the irritating part about the minutes is
that every project manager wants them done differently they don't want them
all the same everyone has their own likes and dislikes so if you're on two
three four five studies and had to take minutes you have to memorize how every
project manager once the minutes done this part is so irritating because you
just want to get through the minutes type them out send them out for updates
and get it done as fast as possible and get it over with
but every project manager is gonna bitch and moan about how bad your minutes are
what you left out what you should have put in there to make them better when at
the end of the day it really doesn't matter too much another reason why the
minutes are the most hated tasks and clinical research is because they have
minimal impact that's right they have minimal impact project managers always
talk about how important they are to document what's going on the meeting so
just in case someone comes back years later or many months later when you're
not even on the project anymore and maybe have moved on to another company
or at a much higher position in the company by the time that happens so
somebody can look back and see what was talked about that day most people want
to do things and contribute to things that have impact instantly or in a short
time in the future but the minutes have minimal impact most of them aren't even
read and when they do have impact when it is necessary to read them is usually
months or years later down the road who wants to care about that another issue
with the minutes is they take so much time first you have to listen to the
meeting which could take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half then you
might have to listen to the recording of the meeting and going through the
recording takes a long time especially if you know Clinical Research is a
global industry so you could be working two people working with
people that have strong accents and could be really hard to understand to
listen to so depending how hard they are to understand and listen to determines
how much time you have to spend just real istening to the recording and then
you have to write all this stuff down and then you have to go through it again
multiple times to edit it for exactly how the project manager wants it and
edit it for grammar and overall flow this could take hours about three to
four hours I even had one project manager complain to me about how much
time I was spending on the minute and I'm thinking so before you told me you
wanted better quality minutes but when I take the time that it actually takes to
make good quality minutes you complain about down spending too much time on the
minutes so which one is it you want good quality minutes or you want speed oh man
y'all got me worked up just talking about these minutes someone needs to
comment down below if they actually like taking the meeting minutes they take so
much time if you're on three four protocols and you have three or four
sets of meeting minutes that's all you're gonna be doing that week you're
not gonna have much time to do anything else
just because they take so much time and I haven't even gotten to the worst part
of the meeting minutes and that is having to follow people follow up with
people to submit their updates so after you write the meeting minutes you have
to send them out to the entire team that was present at the meeting then each one
of them has to give their updates back to you but you have to integrate them
all into one final document and then send them out to the team as a final
document most people won't even respond to the initial email they know every
single week that you always send an email after the meeting minutes after
the meeting has been completed that you need them to submit their updates but
most people don't even respond I guess they're too busy or they just don't care
one or the other but they know every week on schedule you
send out the meeting minutes for update and they know what you asked for
and they just don't do it so you have to chase them down by emailing them
reminding them over and over again sending them instant messages to get
back to you about the meeting minutes and that happens every single week
eventually it just gets old so not to mention that everyone's bitching him on
it moaning it for you to to do the minutes a certain way
and as much time as they take as much time as the meaning takes it's just a
bad situation man all right guys I need to go ahead and end this video before I
have a heart attack if you liked this video go ahead and like it don't forget
to subscribe hit that red subscribe button you can comment down below if you
have any other questions and email us that elite clinical group at gmail.com
alright guys take care