hey guys Serg here back with another episode today I'm going to give my
thoughts on the clinical trials guru new book it's called a comprehensive guide
to clinical research by Dan sfera and Chris Sauber and for those that have
maybe listen to the the collab video the Guru and I did a couple months ago maybe
a month and a half ago now up on the podcast of course and also up on the
YouTube channel you should know it because it has the the thumbnail has the
book cover on it so we did a collab and he was talking about his new book that's
coming out and how it's really like a basic basis and a good starting point
for those that are interested in clinical research and for those that are
maybe new to clinical research within their first couple years to kind of get
a foundation and a basic understanding of what clinical research is and some of
all the different facets that go into being a good clinical research
professional so Dan sent me a copy of this book and I'm so grateful for that
so thank you Dan if you're listening to this I really really appreciate that
that was really really cool and so first off I want to talk about what I found
the book it took me a while to read just because I you know I'm not the best
reader I prefer audiobooks and I know this book is gonna have an audio
component at some point I know it is gonna come out on audiobook so that
would have been in my preferred method now I know there's a lot of people out
there who do prefer reading tangible books to audiobooks and so you can get
this book now currently it's on Amazon and I forget what the price was I think
it's under fifty bucks if I remember correctly but I do I do think that this
book does exactly what Dan said it was going to do it gives you a great base
basis for clinical research I do not think that people who have been in the
industry 5-10 years should you read this book in any capacity
because I feel like a lot of the stuff that are is in this book is for people
that are new to clinical research so I would definitely recommend to get this
book if you are trying to get into clinical research this would be a great
book for you to have because you would understand a lot of the facets and the
basics that you would get anyway within the first few years but you would
understand it before your interview and I think that would actually help you get
a couple more thousand dollars when negotiating your salary because you
understand more than the average new person the clinical research so I think
it's for those people also think if you're within your first two years in
the industry in clinical research this book would be great for you to help you
get a jump start on key terms to help you get a jump start on the different
aspects of clinical research because one of the things that happens is let's say
you get a new job and you're a clinical trial assistant you tend to know the
clinical aspect of clinical research and what they do but you may not understand
you know what data management does you may not quite understand the FDA's role
you may not quite understand you know project man management's role in the
clinical research process so I think this book does a really good job of kind
of tying all that together in understanding what the common goal is
for clinical research and familiarizing you with a lot of the different keywords
and acronyms used in clinical research so I think that's why that book this
book is so great for those people that are new because you're just not gonna
understand all that stuff up upfront you're it's gonna take a while to get
and I mean you would get it but I mean even me being almost four years in the
industry for maybe five years there's some things I picked I did pick
up from this book that that I think are would be important some of the other
things that I really liked about this book were it is easy to read even though
it took me a while to read that's just because I don't have a lot of time to
read in my schedule so my reading time is on flights and it just so happened
after I received the book up in my travel bag and you know the the
flight I had coming upward to New York and the very short flight an hour or
less so you know I didn't really have much time to read and you know doing
that for a few weeks and so I did get through a lot of it each session I think
it probably took me about three hours to read in total so it's a very very quick
read very short read and you know the text is nice and big so it's easy to
read there's also a lot of tables and charts throughout the book too like for
example for I just opened up a random page financial disclosure forms so they
talk about financial disclosure forms and the 1572 and blah blah blah blah so
they actually show a picture a template of what a financial disclosure form
would look like very helpful if you have never seen one before or even even heard
what that is so they've got a lot of full page charts they got a FDA 1572 an
example of what that looks like throughout the book you know they only
talk about ice HDCP they've got a diagram of the 13 principles of Ice Age
GCP and that takes up basically a full page when they talk about monitoring
visits they've got diagrams and and copies of what a monitoring visit report
is gonna look like or an annotated report is gonna look like so you know
very useful it's gonna show you what these things look like and I love that
it's not just text makes it easy to read makes it easy to get through but also is
gonna show you in a lot of times showing you is better than they then you can be
told so yeah I would definitely give this book you know a 5 out of 5 it does
exactly what it's set out to do that's this and Dan told this on the when he
came on the podcast it's not a book for experts it's not a book for people even
intermediates really it's not a book for those people this is a book for people
that are new to the industry and letter you know just getting their start in
clinical research and I think it's exactly for that it does a great job I'm
a lot of this information is on the internet I mean I'm
videos on a lot of these topics I know Dan has done episodes I mean he's been
doing this way longer than I have I know he's done episodes I'm probably
all of these topics but it's nice to have it in one concise manual if you
will one place that that you can just pick up and read it whenever you need it
I think this is something I definitely might reference in the future for you
know just spurring up video ideas or just if I have a question about
something you know this is definitely something I could see myself referencing
in the future now I want to talk about specifics of the book so a couple
specifics of the book that I thought were very very important and one is
gonna be in the back where they have a list of acronyms let's see if I can find
it I was looking to yeah they have a list of acronyms so that's good common
and useful you have every chapter in the last chapter is a bunch of common and
useful stuff so they got acronyms once again you're gonna pick these up as
you work in clinical research so it's not important that you sit there and
like memorize them or anything but they you know it's there for you to reference
another thing I thought was good was they have a list of positions in
clinical research which by no means is it complete or anything I mean that
would be crazy to list out all the positions but the main ones in house
cra-cra project manager TMF specialist clinical
trial assistant they talked about the pay and it talked about exactly what
they do so that's very high yield and I think it could be very beneficial for
people that are looking to get in the clinical research industry I talked
about the diagrams for like important essential documents and things of that
nature they talked about the different studies they talked about the different
phases of clinical research so overall this is a great book really really great
book and you know if I was just graduating college or you know just
trying to get into clinical research right now and Dan was talking about this
book I'd probably be a little hesitant
because you know it is almost $50 or I think but I'd have been very very glad
to have this book this this is something that I think definitely would have
helped me early on in my career and definitely helped me prepare me better
for the interviews because you know they might have been asking questions and you
really would wow someone if you knew some of the background knowledge and
some of this knowledge is not easy to find on the Internet
even though it's out there somewhere but it's you know sometimes it's not obvious
and especially if you're looking up something about an acronym those aren't
necessarily out there and tons of other industries may use the same acronym but
obviously it's going to mean something way different so this is a great book so
I give it I give it five stars for sure I strongly recommend and I think Dan and
Chris they did a great job writing this in terms in the way that it was written
because you know it's written very easy to read it's not super super complicated
texts where some books can get like that it's not written like a text book it's
written like a book that you can just pick up and casually read and still
enjoy yourself while learning about clinical research so I appreciate that
they put this book out there and you know I hope maybe they'll come with
another edition or something more in-depth for us people that a little bit
more advanced in clinical research later but as far as you know somebody new to
the industry or just getting their start in the industry I definitely recommend
that you pick up this book definitely recommend so that's it for this episode
guys thanks Dan for sending over a copy of the book and you know it's
autographed so I really appreciate that you know this is definitely gonna go on
the bookshelf my bookshelf isn't too heavy right now you know I don't have a
ton of books but definitely the ones that matter I do have and I definitely
keep this around so thanks Dan thanks everybody for listening as always email
me a leak clinical group at gmail.com if you have any inquiries I want to do the
resume interview program want your LinkedIn profile reviewed or want some
interview preparation email me a leak clinical group at gmail.com take care
guys