Week 4: Problems with Training

I just finished my fourth week at DelRicht Research and as I reflect on being halfway done the internship, I think it has been enjoyable so far. When I joined the team four weeks ago, there was a full-time employee starting her on-boarding and training with me. She did not have as nice of an experience in her first four weeks and emailed our boss on Friday that she quit. She would complain quite a bit at work, which made me uncomfortable because I was just so grateful to have the opportunity and could not relate to her frustration with the company, but I never expected her to quit. She told me that she wrote in her resignation email that it was not the “right fit,” but I could tell by her complaints that she was mostly frustrated by the leadership of the people training her.

Although on paper everything is organized and seems perfected, the clinic can feel chaotic at times when there are not enough study coordinators to complete visits for the patients that are there. Since the other trainee and myself have been busy starting to complete the visits we know how to do, when they call on us to do a more complicated two-hour screening visit for a patient to join a study, it is overwhelming. It seems like once we started seeing the patients, they forgot we still needed training. It is disappointing because they are throwing us in to things because there are not enough people to complete visits, not because they truly think I am well trained.

This seems like a problem and leaves a lot of room for error. I think to have the most efficient training, we should shadow every type of visit once. On Thursday I was asked to complete a visit I had never been walked through before and the patient got quite mad at me because the visit was taking so long. Even though it was technically taking the allotted two hours, it could have been quicker and smoother if I had a better idea of what I was supposed to be doing and when. Just shadowing another study coordinator in that type of visit for that study would have made it better when I attempted it. I am nervous that with another other study coordinator gone, it will only get more chaotic. The problem may actually require hiring more people to work there.