hey guys ECR G here and today we're gonna be talking about how much is too
much with respect to the meeting minutes
hey guys ECR G here and today we're gonna be
talking about how much is too much with the meeting minutes now you know guys I
talked about the meeting and it's quite a bit and if you haven't watched my
first video on meeting minutes it's titled the worst task in clinical
research I recommend watching that video before you watch this video and then
there's a second video I made about meeting minutes which talks about a
better way to take meeting minutes so an improvement on capturing all the
highlights and notes and everything from meetings so how much is too much in the
field of clinical research if you really want to advance your career practice
other tasks and become really good at other things besides just taking notes
because that's essentially what meeting minutes are and you can eventually begin
thinking to yourself wow I didn't do four years of school just to you know
become a professional note-taker or you know I didn't do a graduate degree just
to be here taking notes all the time and I found myself in my first position in
clinical research where I was doing meeting minutes thinking that from time
to time but from how much is too much so the meeting minutes you know I talked
about in the past we're not gonna rehash them but they are good for capturing
what went on a meeting if later on you want to come back and see what was said
in that meeting you know it happens from time to time a sponsor may say they said
something and it wasn't captured in the minutes the spot supposed to review it
and if it was that important they should have made sure that it was captured in
the minutes because you know we're only human this this isn't the recording
method like I said like I discussed in my previous video where you know
everything is captured in that way but I digress so how much is too much for one
person to do if we're considering that each meeting
is an hour and we're talking about the process of meeting minutes we're talking
about the agenda creation before the meeting and writing the minutes either
during the meeting or after the meeting and setting them out to the team
following up with the team members making sure that they're reviewing them
uploading them to the proper database or uploading them into the trial master
file or if there's another database that you guys use but of course they're gonna
be in the Tri master file as well how many sets can one person do so one set
up meeting minutes a week that's agenda creation and a meet in a meeting minute
one set weekly an hour each meeting easy for a person to do if I would recommend
just getting on one because you get the practice to do the set of meeting
minutes you'll get good at listening for things in conversations and you know
that's a skill that it's good to practice so and then you'll have a whole
bunch of other time I say each each set there's about four hours including the
meeting writing them up editing them about four four and a half hours
depending on how big your team is so one set is easy you'll have the rest of the
your time to learn other things do trainings and you know get your hands
dirty and other things so one set is great but of course you're gonna be
allocated to multiple studies so if you're only doing one set that means
your other studies you know you're doing other things so it's unlikely that
you're only to have one unless you or unless you're just really lucky and you
have none some people have that two sets that's manageable that's doable that's
probably about average most people have two sets at any given time three sets
it's doable also it's it's time-consuming because once I said that
you said you're I said you're gonna take about four hours to do each one so
that's a pretty solid chunk of time four or four and a half hours
but you don't really want to go past that for you can you can do it's not
sustainable on a weekend and week out basis because it's not just riding the
minutes in writing the agenda that is time-consuming it's the thought process
and how much time it takes to think about it and to build that into your
schedule and be like okay I need to do this on this day so I need to make sure
everybody has in their updates by such and such day it's not it's not just the
is not just writing them and creating them that takes up the time is it's
taking up the mental bandwidth to think about when things have to be due and
when they're done and all the changes to the meeting times and stuff like that
that really takes up the time and really can chew up a lot of your time and focus
on other things in that you're trying to learn in clinical research so four sets
is on a weekly basis not sustainable you can do that a couple weeks three weeks
at a time but after that you're gonna be burned you're gonna be burnt out and
people are gonna notice you're gonna be you know not adding people in metadata
CTMS you're gonna be forgetting to do this we you know not responding to
emails quickly it's gonna be bad if you're at four sets five sets that
better be just for that one week in one week only six impossible you better you
tell him now he'll notice six you're not touching six push back immediately on
six five I would push back too because that's that's ridiculous four it's
doable not sustainable three you can do that weekly you can you can do that
weekly not ideal because you're not gonna have as much time to do other
things but it can be done and a lot of times if you're on if you're on three
you're gonna be the only PA only PS project coordinator whatever it is
you're gonna be the only person supporting that that a particular
protocol and they're gonna be giving just giving you everything so you're
gonna get a lot of experience you know time management wise and also just
experience on the trial because they're most likely gonna be giving you
everything because you're gonna be the only person on there to do it
so that's that's that's good if you're on two or less that's that's a good
point is you may not be the only other person servicing because you may be
splitting the minutes or everyone made giving up the minutes so everyone's
gonna be doing up the tasks as well so that's kind of like a hidden side of
having three minutes even though you have less time to do other things you
you're in fact may have more broad experience and more chances to do other
activities because you're gonna be the only person on the trial and they're
gonna be more apt to give you those responsibilities so it's kind of
counterintuitive when it comes to three but four five six absolutely not and
that's because also you're probably gonna be backing up somebody else that
you work with on the trial so if you have two sets of meeting minutes that
need to be done on a weekly basis and you have and one person has one set
you have the other set they go on vacation you're now in charge of that
second set so now you have to to do that week and so you're if you're already at
for a week like by yourself somebody goes on vacation now you're suddenly at
five and that's where it becomes unsustainable where you don't want to be
doing for for a very long time because ultimately someone's gonna go on
vacation at some point and you're gonna have five and also for just a lot to do
it's just a lot to do like I said that mental drain on you is just it's just
bad mmm do not do not do it and then three and below is okay so you know
that's that's how much meeting minutes I'd suggest that is is good for some
person to really you know think about and focus and I find the meeting minutes
it's better it's better for someone to do the meeting minutes that understands
what's going on in the trial I find I found it ridiculous when I was first
getting in clinical research that I was doing the meeting minutes I was in
charge of you know capturing all these things when
I don't even know what anybody was saying it was like people are speaking
at different languages they were saying all these acronyms and things and I'd be
writing them down the best of my ability but they would always talk about you
know how I wasn't being specific enough and you know I was just write down what
they said and they were like don't copy exactly what they say try and paraphrase
but I was like how can I paraphrase I don't even understand what they're
saying so he just comes with time and one of the best things you can do to
improve your meeting minutes is start in the beginning of a trial from from the
very beginning before the kickoff meeting go to the kickoff meeting attend
those high-level high overview macro level meetings where they talk about the
trial in all of its glory because they're you're gonna get familiar with
the terms are going to be using throughout the trial throughout the
years of the trial and you're gonna understand when they talk about okay
we're gonna be using this CDA template you're not gonna be confused when they
say that when they're saying we're gonna use this piq template we're gonna be
using metadata CTMS we're gonna be using you know trial interactive we're gonna
be using you know you're gonna talk about these software's and stuff you're
not you're not gonna be confused with what they're talking about and that's
gonna help you make to take better minutes because you're gonna know what
they're talking about you're gonna be more concise and you're gonna be up on
more things in the conversation so just a little quick tip there on the end of
this video I wasn't expecting that not at all
but there it is guys so that's it for this video how much is too much for the
meeting minutes I'm curious what you guys think down below how many sets are
too much for the meeting minutes once again it I based it on an hour-long
video on an hour-long meeting time that's just standard that I had at the
time and I noticed not everybody is gonna have our in-law meetings I had
colleagues that said they had 30 minute meetings and I was like what I was so
jealous when they said that because that obviously takes a lot less time
less effort to do the meeting minutes then if you have an hour because when I
said an hour that meant it could sometimes go to an hour and a half and
that happened more often than not so at least if it's 30 minutes that means it
can only sometimes go 45 to an hour but anyways guys that's it for this video
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