Any CRAs on here?

[CRAmum]

Any mumsnetters on here who work as a CRA? As in clinical research associate?

I'm currently a Snr CRA II, on £52k plus £5k car allowance, working for smallish CRO with no monitoring visit metrics to br met. The company average was 3.5days monitoring per month but we've been acquired and they are pushing for all CRAs to do 8 days a month.

I'm wondering what is the going rate for a CRA now? Amd how many days monitoring are you doing per month? From recent colleagues who have left, they are paid similar to me but get £10 -15k more. Thinking of jumping ship as we are still expected to do submissions, document collection, study start up, contract amendments etc but yet do 8 days a month.

Anyone?

I used to recruit CRAs but it was a while ago, so not sure the usual but 8 days a month monitoring does not seem a lot. Why don’t you talk to a recruiter who works this market and get a better idea from them what the market rate is etc

Massively late to this but I am a SCRA with a big company, expected to have 8 DOS a month but to be honest they don’t really hold you to it and remote visits count, most SIVs are now remote I find. I’m on similar to you 54k plus 6k car and bonus, I joined about 8 months ago and strongly suspect I am massively underpaid. I came here for career progression to CTM which they are helping me ‘work towards’ but whether they are happy to have me to stop monitoring any time soon remains to be seen…I’m also now pregnant which will pause that but their May leave isn’t bad compared to what I have heard from other places.
I came from a mid sized CRO, who had horrendous salary and career progression, promised everything before joining and then nothing came through.
Happy to name names on companies in a private message if that would be helpful 😊

Hey, I know I’m super late to this thread but would really appreciate it if you are able to answer any of my questions! I’m looking into becoming a CRA (I have an interview tomorrow) and I know that there’s travel involved with this role, just wondering how you find it works with family life balance? Are you able to fit your in around childcare and how do you find the hours with young children? Thank you!

So, it really depends on what their travel metrics are, the type of visit (onsite vs remote) and how understanding your line manager is.

With CRA life, the travel can be incredibly tough. If you are expected to do 8 days a month, that's 2 days away from home a week, possibly 2.5 days. If somewhere a few hours away, you could do an early start, monitor, stay one night, monitor 2nd day then come home. You will need a supportive partner who steps up when you are away. It can work, but it's tough if your DC are still sick alot and not sleeping through the night. My DH steps up but his work is very demanding so it's tough for him too.

Whatever you do, don't start off too low salary wise, it's a tough job. What is your experience so far in clinical research? I would also ask what their travel policy is. If you have little DC, taking the train works better for me due to lack of sleep and I'm quite well connected train wise.

Hope this helps

Also wanted to add, we use a childminder who works up until 6pm so when I'm not around, DH collects at 6pm whereas normally it's 5pm.

If I can get home in time, I generally rush back for 7pm to do bed time.

Also for reference, Snr CRA, 9 years experience, £55k plus 6.5k car allowance, big pharma. I've found it not much different to mid sized CRO which I left last year to start at pharma in Jan this year.

Hey, thank you for replying, that’s really helpful! I have been working as a trial co-ordinator for a few years in the NHS so I think I have quite a good background in clinical research. I think I could probably deal with one overnight stay a week as I’ve been used to doing night shifts over the years anyway but wouldn’t want it to be more than this really. My salary isn’t great now anyway and is pretty stagnant in the NHS, hence why I’m trying to get my foot in the door as a CRA and hopefully be able to progress my career this way! Do you get the travel time included in your working hours? So for example if you had two long days (including travel) would this mean that you could work for less time on the other days to account for this? Thank you so much for replying, it’s really helpful!

So your background is ideal and you'll have no problem getting a CRA job.

So no, I doesn't count towards your hours if you do 2 long days. I generally cap the max hours I do in a week at 45hrs, very occasionally at 50hrs at a push. You end up reporting 45hrs in your time sheet but the expectation is to do normal ish hours the rest of the week.

Have you thought about what starting salary you want to ask for? If you can, try and chat to CRAs who are mums and ask them how they are coping to give you an idea who to apply for.

Thank you! Ahh okay, that’s good to know as in my current job I only work 37.5 hours and never go over that! I actually have no clue about starting salary, I’m currently on NHS band 6 which is about 36K (will remain at that for another 2 years now matter how much extra responsibility I take on) so wouldn’t want to drop any lower than that but not sure if that’s realistic for a junior CRA role. I’ve spoken to nurses/trial co-ordinators turned CRA’s who have children and say it was actually much better than working for the NHS in terms of salary/progression etc but I suppose it depends on your manager and the company doesn’t it!

I would say if you are interested in progression and salary increase, then yes go for it. You can try it out for a year or so decide if it's for you.

As for salary, don't sell yourself short. The private sector doesn't work to bands as such when it comes to salary. If anything, I've found the salary for newer CRAs starting out to be fairly high whereas for Snr CRAs, it hasn't gone up as much. I would start at £45k plus car allowance and see what they say.

Plus I would have a look at what childcare you have, how flexible they are at extending hours and how much more will it cost you to be away from home 2 long days a week.

You may find some of your visits are remote, if that's the case, you would be doing around 37.5hrs that week.

Also my DS is particularly sickly so I'm getting a bit fed up with it.

Thank you so much, your responses have been really helpful! I’ve never worked in the private sector so I think I unknowingly would sell myself short, I’ll definitely see what they say about that salary level! I don’t actually have children yet so I think this is a good time for me to start but I’m wanting a family in the near future so it is very important for me to have that family-life balance! I can understand it must be very difficult to juggle when children are unwell, my current job isn’t particularly flexible anyway unfortunately! Thank you for your help!

If you don't have children yet, then that changes everything! Absolutely go for it, earn the extra money, start a family then take it from there.

With everything costing so much and children can be expensive, you should try and make the move.

Good luck with the interview, I'm happy for you to DM about specific companies!

Ahh thank you so much for your advice, it’s been really helpful! I might take you up on that offer if my interview goes well ☺️

I work as a Research Nurse at the moment and I got kids no support from family. I am thinking if it is worth switching career to CRA to earn higher and what life is like for CRAs now

Hi, I switched from being an NHS research nurse to a CRA just over a year ago. It really depends on the sponsor that you work for and where your sites are located, but if I am being completely honest, I do think it would be very difficult to do the role if you've got children and no family support.
In terms of things like your site visits, more than likely you won't be home until later on in the evening and would also potentially have to do overnight stays so you'd have to consider the childcare provision for that depending on how old your children are?
I have found the last year a really good experience for my career but I am actually trying to get back into research nursing in the NHS simply because I do think that being a research nurse is more family friendly hours than being a CRA. But it's literally impossible to get back into the NHS at the moment as nowhere is recruiting!
Also in terms of pay, again, the pay as a CRA can be really good but often CRA's remain stagnant unless you keep switching companies, it can actually be quite hard to jump up the ranks (this is only in my experience and other people may say differently). One of my close friends is a band 7 research nurse and her salary/pension/annual leave are actually overall better than mine as a CRA and I do think the NHS has a better flexible working policy than most contract research organisations.
On the other hand, as a CRA you can work from home a lot which is great for flexibility, it's more the travel days that would be hard with family life.

Being a CRA does lead you into able to be a study manager where the pay is better and often no travel involved, but you'd have to be a CRA for a few years before they would even consider you for a study manager role, so it's whether you could deal with the travel etc for those years! The study manager role also seems very stressful and being a CRA made me realise that I wouldn't actually want to deal with the stress. A lot of the study managers I know are constantly checking their emails when on annual leave, at 10PM at night etc just to keep up with the demand, but that might just be the company I work for!

I hope that helps but please feel free to PM me if you have any more questions!