8 Reasons You Should Take Part In A Clinical Trial
6. You'll Help Researchers Sleep At Night
Trials may test drugs or combinations of drugs, surgical procedures or devices, ways to screen patients for diagnosis, and care procedures. Each and every clinical trial requires human participants to take part in the study in order to test these new medicines and procedures, but it's very difficult to find people to sign up.
In practical terms, not recruiting enough participants is a Very Bad thing for science. In the very worst cases trials can be abandoned if enough people don't sign up to participate, and if that happens then answers to the research question the trial aimed to answer will remain a mystery.
Thankfully trial abandonment is rare. In more common cases though, researchers manage to recruit between 60 and 80% of the people they’d hoped to – you’re thinking that’s not so bad, right? It’s not good, that’s for sure; without the target number of participants, the results of a study could actually give us incorrect information.
Designing and managing a clinical trial is hard work; there are multiple areas where the study could miss targets and exceed budgets. Recruitment is the most common pitfall; getting you guys involved in their trials is the one thing that keeps researchers awake at night.
Take part in a clinical trial and reduce stress levels of a researcher immeasurably – their families will thank you for it.