your your CRA now what do you what do you like most about the position like
what is what are some things you like um I like a lot of things Oh actually I
think just overall clinical research is just like a big ball of learning
experience I'm the type of person like I love to learn new things I love a good
challenge and with the field especially with the CRA role like you get that
almost daily and you know it's always something different every day like maybe
the site doesn't have the supplies and the subject is coming in for a visit in
a few days and they need like an expedited order or they have questions
about the protocol where they don't really understand like you know if it
seems ambiguous to them you may have to explain it or you know a subject had it
had to have an emergency room visit and they want to know if it's an adverse
event or a serious adverse event or it's just you know anything can happen
so each day is kind of like putting out small fires and you learn a lot doing
that like you gain experience from having different issues at the different
sites so that you'll know moving forward like what to do if that situation comes
up again so I like that aspect of it and then you know when you're assigned to a
project team of course you have to do training and that training includes like
in that presentations about the indication of the different treatments
for the indication for the project that you're working on you know how the drug
works and all of that is interesting to me you know as I said I was pre-med in
college but and I've always you know loved to learn about the health field so
that's another thing that I like you know cuz you learn about health issues
and diseases that you probably would even thought of like oh if you weren't
working on that project you get to meet a lot of people as a CRA because you
travel a lot well depending on the company you may or may not travel as
much a day I know I some of the places I go I choose to stay in the same hotel
you not see the same you know people that work at the hotel all the time oh
yeah make new friends and of course traveling is always cool you know we
keep the points from the airlines and a rental cars and the hotel points so
that's always a plus as well oh yeah it's a lot of things so you've been
traveling since 2015 right um 2016 2016 is about two years how has that been as
it's been tiring for you at times is it stressful at times there's it's
troubling drug juggling that with a full-time job I mean I know it comes
with the job but you know what I'm saying
yeah so it was um it has this some moments have like you know challenges so
I was assigned to I think three different projects at one point and even
though like the traveling frequency for those projects differ sometimes they do
overlap so it will always be like you know every few months I was like
traveling a lot because the frequency overlapped but other than that you know
I was always prepared cuz always you know try to plan ahead of time so I knew
like which month it would be heavy traveling versus other where it's you
know not so heavy so I think that I guess it's like the biggest thing but
other than that has been pretty cool like I haven't you know been tired out
you have intervals I guess when I'm not traveling at all like you know like
ironic Christmas holiday um things you know die down Road everywhere sadly it's
lovely during that time yeah so exactly how much do you travel because I've said
this number before and people still don't believe me
what do you say that you could say the percentage and then say about how many
times per week that really comes out to or how many times per month that really
shakes out too
um I would say like 75% around that much back um our company recently like
changes models so they're trying to they like change their frequency of how men
should we travel so it's written down a little bit but I would say like once or
twice a week I'm traveling yeah okay and it's not like a set like every week I'm
traveling you know once or twice of course sometimes I don't go anywhere at
the whole week it just depends on your project and the monitoring frequency for
your project because I know some people they go to the same places like every
two weeks so okay yeah right right right mm-hmm
definitely definitely relies on that interval there yeah and so what's the
most you've traveled the most I travel yeah because I imagine you've had
different projects over the course of the two years yeah yeah what's the bug
traveled I think let me see it was like mid August to September of 2016
I was probably home like literally just on the weekends like I mean of course
you know like say I had a visit on Monday I travel out Sunday and I come
back Monday night but I have another visit on Wednesday so I'm literally home
Monday night Tuesday half today and I'm flying out again to the next place so I
was doing that like mid to late August and all of September in 2016 but I had
just so I was doing termination visits for one of my studies
but I was also doing - our visits for the same study and then I had just been
assigned a new study and they had they had to pay a penalty if the monitoring
visits weren't done within the a timeframe like the company has to pay
a penalty to the sponsor so I had to like fit those visits in okay yeah and
they weren't pretty planned by the previous monitor so it's like I couldn't
really you know right he's laying it so that's pretty much like a hundred
percent travel during that time yeah for that let's sail is Chris ninety percent
but I mean it doesn't always happen like that at all right so it seems like in a
normal in a normal case you can pretty much spread it out to however you want
want it can you also like Jam pack it in so like maybe like the first two weeks
you're traveling a lot in the last two weeks you're not traveling so much yeah
it's all up to you make your own schedule you know you you talk to decide
about their availability and match it with chores and you pick a we don't ask
someone you know that's what for the company I work for we don't have someone
to mix our travel arrangements like and schedules the business with society we
do all that ourselves