2020 Reflections on my Course in Clinical Operations

A 3-month course takes me on a 35 year walk down memory lane.

When I sat down to write this, my first thought was of a 10-page article I just wrote yesterday about family and the holiday season. Most of my stories only get about 30 views. That article, although rather long, has 57 views so far. Not many, but enough to push my earnings from writing for the month of November up to $7.12. That’s about my monthly average. Something tells me I should probably keep my day job.

Speaking of my day job, although I have recently returned to clinical research, contrary to what some recruiters try to tell me, not much has changed in the industry. My career has spanned 10 years total including 7 years as a CRA, 2 years in Regulatory Affairs, and 1 year in Data Management. All of which fall under the umbrella of “Clinical Operations.”

In addition to that, I functionally worked as Associate Director of Operations for 3 years in my other career in the education industry. Besides making me feel old, all of that experience made me feel I was especially prepared for this class in Clinical Operations.

My suspicions ended up being mostly true. Except for budgeting and contracts, I have performed all the other duties covered by the course at some point during my clinical career. When considering my entire working life, then budgeting and contracts are also areas I am intimately familiar with.

As is typical for me as well as many others, all of that experience doesn’t mean much when it comes to being organized and prepared for an academic course on this or any other subject. In fact, people tend to underperform when they have in-depth knowledge of a subject. It affects their ability to focus and learn just as much as overestimating one’s knowledge will also adversely affect performance.

The course was more difficult for me precisely because I’ve heard a large portion of the information being presented before. It was difficult to focus on the material. The effect sometimes made me feel as though I were sleepwalking through the course, jumping through the required hoops and ticking off the necessary boxes as they came up.

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