Clinical Research Isn't Even A Recognized Job. That's A Problem.
By John Oncea, Chief Editor, Clinical Tech Leader
Here’s a fact that surprises most people outside clinical research, and more than a few inside it: in the U.S., there is no dedicated federal occupational classification recognizing clinical research professionals as a distinct profession. A study coordinator filing a tax form has to check a box for something else entirely; often “nurse,” regardless of what their actual job involves. David Vulcano, CEO of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals, calls it exactly what it sounds like: the industry can’t fully measure a workforce the federal government doesn’t formally recognize.
A Career With No Front Door
Vulcano didn’t mince words about the scale of the workforce problem. “We do a good job in robbing staff from each other,” he told me. “As an industry, we don’t do a good job of welcoming new people to our industry. People really have to fight and fall into our industry.” Clinical research, he said, has long been known as “the accidental career.” Nobody sets out to become a clinical research coordinator; they start as a nurse, a lab tech, an aspiring physician, and stumble into the field sideways.
That informal pipeline has real consequences. Without recognized job codes, the industry has struggled to make its case to policymakers, to build formal apprenticeship pathways, or even to accurately study the size and shape of its own workforce. Vulcano said ACRP has been working directly with the Bureau of Labor Statistics – an agency that updates its occupational codes only once a decade – to try to change that, strengthen federally recognized apprenticeship pathways and open access to workforce development opportunities.
The Cost Of Not Fixing It
The workforce strain shows up in ways that are easy to measure even without an official job code. Vulcano pointed to clinical research associates and monitors who change jobs multiple times a year, each move netting a meaningful pay bump simply because demand outstrips supply. That kind of churn isn’t a sign of a healthy labor market; it’s a sign of an industry poaching from itself rather than growing its own pipeline. “That’s just not sustainable,” he said.
Rising protocol complexity is compounding the problem from a different angle. Vulcano cited data showing more sites turning down studies outright because of the administrative burden layered on top of the science, not just the four corners of the protocol itself, but the manuals, systems, and training requirements that come bundled with it. Add in what he called plain “tech fatigue” – one more new e-system to learn, one more onboarding session – and it’s little wonder investigators, especially near retirement age, are choosing not to take on new studies at all.
Building A Front Door That Didn’t Exist Before
Rather than waiting for the job-code fix to work its way through federal bureaucracy, ACRP has started building alternate entry points directly. Vulcano described local-chapter partnerships with high schools and STEM programs designed to introduce the field to students before they default into nursing or lab science and discover clinical research by accident years later. Critically, he emphasized building awareness of clinical research as a career beginning in high school while creating multiple pathways into the profession through options such as community college programs, foundational education, and apprenticeships.
He’s also candid about what the incoming generation will expect once they arrive. Younger workers who grew up with seamlessly connected consumer technology, he said, are going to walk into research jobs and immediately question why their systems don’t talk to each other the way their phone does. That expectation – impatience with exactly the kind of disconnected systems described in this series’ companion piece, The Real Reason Clinical Trial Systems Don’t Talk to Each Other – could become a genuine force for change, if the industry can first convince them to walk through the door at all.
Why This Matters Beyond HR
Vulcano frames the workforce shortage as more than an operations problem; he sees it as a threat to the industry’s basic capacity to deliver trials at all, echoing concerns raised elsewhere in this series about shrinking investigator pools and unsustainable site workloads. His case for why anyone should choose this field, despite its lack of a formal identity, is a personal one: clinical research, he said, is why he’ll be able to walk his daughter down the aisle, why a patient might see one more Christmas with family, why someone gets to live with less pain than they otherwise would. That case resonated during the pandemic, when the field enjoyed a rare moment of public visibility. It’s since faded from view, leaving an industry with a genuinely compelling story about itself, and, for now, still no box to check that says so.