Aims:
Increasing patients on clinical trials is underpinned by a highly competent workforce. Now in its third year, the SKILLED clinical trials internship program provides a talent pipeline to science-based graduates. This comprehensive 40-week program accelerates readiness to operate as a clinical trial assistant (CTA) or study coordinator (SC) and builds the capacity and capability of the Victorian clinical trials workforce.
Methods:
The program ensures job readiness through a competency based, experiential, multimodal training program. This includes a 2-week orientation to clinical trials fundamentals; 38-week supervised training in metropolitan and regional clinical trial sites; quality improvement project; eLearning; periodic reflection and assessment process. Surveys based on a 1-5 Likert scale of novice to expert (with 3 as job ready) were performed at week 0, 15, 25 and 37 to measure progress and enrich programmatic improvement.
Results:
From 2019 to 2020, 55 (30 CTAs and 25 SCs) honours, masters, PhD, and post-doctoral science-based graduates were recruited with 20 (36.4%) in regional Victoria. 100% of the intern respondents were satisfied (6 of 33) to very satisfied (27 of 33). 100% of the host site respondents were satisfied (6 of 24) to very satisfied (18 of 24).
Competency levels increased for all CTA and SC interns across the period. CTAs week 0 compared to week 37 competency rating was 0.40 – 3.38. SCs were 0.545 - 3.4. Interns trained at regional sites were employed in the region at 75% in 2019 and 58% in 2020. 100% of the interns were retained in the program and 93.75% obtained ongoing employment in the sector.
Conclusion(s):
Two years of evaluation results have proven the success of this transformative workforce development pipeline. Science based graduates obtain clinical trial competence, contribute to quality improvement processes, and strengthen the capacity and capability of the Victorian clinical trials workforce.