The Clinical Research Careers website is a valuable resource for young researchers, and it was visited over 3,200 times in 2022. Its course database was also expanded in 2022. The website’s activities contribute to the White Paper: Clinical Research’s goal to create an attractive environment for research professionals at all career levels.
The Clinical Research Careers (CR Careers) website helps medical students, young physicians, and all research professionals make their way in the complex and exciting field of clinical research. In the last year, the website was visited over 3,200 times by more than 2,000 users. In 2022, the training course database on the CR Careers website was expanded with relevant statistics, data science, and epidemiology training options provided by academic partners. An expansion of funding opportunities from private foundations specifically for young researchers is also under development and will be implemented in the coming months. The CR Careers website is being further developed with the aim of including entire research teams to a greater extent. This aim fits with goals, recommendations, and measures formulated in the White Paper: Clinical Research, published in July 2021 by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS).
Clinical Research Careers website
The CR Careers website was developed through a collaboration between SAMS, the SCTO, and unimedsuisse. It includes several work packages from the Roadmap 2016–2021 for Developing the Next Generation of Clinical Researchers, published in 2016 by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). The website contains searchable databases with programmes for career support, funding, and mentoring as well as postgraduate training options in Switzerland. The website also includes the Clinical Research Core Competencies Framework for planning and conducting clinical trials as well as inspiring success stories of physicians who combine clinical research and clinical duties.
In order to facilitate the acquisition of uniform professional qualifications in clinical research, the core competencies needed to run clinical trials were defined and put into the Clinical Research Core Competencies Framework (CRCC Framework) in 2021. In 2022, the CRCC Framework was promoted in an article in Swiss Medical Weekly. In 2022, the SCTO’s Education Platform also began developing a similar core competencies framework specific to research projects under the Human Research Ordinance (HRO). This HRO competencies framework will be available online by mid-2023.