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How many research nurses for how many clinical trials in an oncology setting? Definition of the Nursing Time Required by Clinical Trial—Assessment Tool (NTRCT‐AT)
Author(s) -
Milani Alessandra,
Mazzocco Ketti,
Stucchi Sara,
Magon Giorgio,
Pravettoni Gabriella,
Passoni Claudia,
Ciccarelli Chiara,
Tonali Alessandra,
Profeta Teresa,
Saiani Luisa
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of nursing practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1440-172X
pISSN - 1322-7114
DOI - 10.1111/ijn.12497
Subject(s) - workload , clinical trial , staffing , nursing , medicine , clinical practice , workforce , computer science , pathology , economics , economic growth , operating system
Abstract Few resources are available to quantify clinical trial–associated workload, needed to guide staffing and budgetary planning. The aim of the study is to describe a tool to measure clinical trials nurses' workload expressed in time spent to complete core activities. Clinical trials nurses drew up a list of nursing core activities, integrating results from literature searches with personal experience. The final 30 core activities were timed for each research nurse by an outside observer during daily practice in May and June 2014. Average times spent by nurses for each activity were calculated. The “Nursing Time Required by Clinical Trial—Assessment Tool” was created as an electronic sheet that combines the average times per specified activities and mathematic functions to return the total estimated time required by a research nurse for each specific trial. The tool was tested retrospectively on 141 clinical trials. The increasing complexity of clinical research requires structured approaches to determine workforce requirements. This study provides a tool to describe the activities of a clinical trials nurse and to estimate the associated time required to deliver individual trials. The application of the proposed tool in clinical research practice could provide a consistent structure for clinical trials nursing workload estimation internationally.