Role perceptions of nurse clinical research coordinators

Nursing roles in clinical research have evolved in the last 3 decades and include diverse responsibilities and job titles. Nurse clinical research coordinators' (NCRCs) roles include study planning, implementation, participant recruitment and retention, assessment of participants' responses to clinical protocols, data management, and evaluation. The purpose of this study was to examine NCRCs' perceptions of 59 specific clinical research activities that have been proposed as a taxonomy of NCRC activities. Participants were asked to check whether each of the 59 activities is being performed, and whether those activities should be performed, by NCRCs. The sample included 61 NCRCs who were attending the annual meeting of the International Association of Clinical Research Nurses. The percentage of respondents who indicated that the 59 activities are being performed by NCRCs at their sites ranged from 55%-98.4%. The percentage of respondents who indicated that the 59 activities should be performed by NCRCs ranged from 61.7%-88.5%. There were eight activities that fewer than 70% of the respondents reported should be performed by NCRCs. Chi-square analyses were conducted to determine whether there was a difference in the distribution of responses to the "are performed" versus "should be performed" responses for each of the 59 activities. There were significant differences in the distributions for 49 of the activities. The percentage of nurses responding "are performed" was higher than the percentage of responses to the "should be performed" items for 41 of these 49 activities. Findings suggest that further research is needed to validate the extent to which the taxonomy of clinical research nurse (CRN) roles is a valid reflection of the actual practice of NCRCs, and also to explore reasons for the discrepancies in the responses to "are performed" and "should be performed" for 49 of these 59 activities that were identified in this study.