21 Nov Never Fear, Assertiveness is an Indispensable Soft Skill for Clinical Researchers

The Association of Clinical Research Professionals

It’s a sentiment you may have heard already at more than one gathering of research professionals who work in or with clinical trial units based (even buried) within larger academic medical centers, hospital systems, networked medical practices, and the like: The duties of trial team members, other site staff, and their vendors are performed so “behind the scenes” compared to the rest of the institutions’ activities, it can be a struggle to get their priorities and contributions noticed properly by leadership. As a result, study quality is suffering, timelines are being missed, and staff churn is increasing.

Fear not, says Agnieszka (Aga) Finlayson, MSc, MA, Founder and Director of White Wisteria Academy, who will focus on the benefits and practice of assertiveness in clinical research at the ACRP 2024 conference in Anaheim, Calif. “Broadly speaking, I want to present assertiveness as one of the underpinning soft skills that significantly impacts the clinical research workforce as well as the quality of its output,” she notes.

Through its contributions to the quality of one’s work, assertiveness is a vehicle for driving prioritization and decision making, Finlayson explains. “In essence,” she says, “it’s about so much more than the ability to say ‘no.’”

That ability to say “no” with good reason and to stick to it in the face of so many complexities in clinical operations is critical for professionals who often are juggling many studies at once and trying to spread limited resources as effectively as possible between them all, Finlayson says. Read more…