Clinical Trials Day 2021: words from a research nurse

International Clinical Trials Day is celebrated around the world in May to acknowledge and celebrate the many people who are involved in clinical trials. It is also a unique opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of clinical trials and clinical research as a career option – among the greater public. Learn more about Clinical Trials Day here

Read the words written by Aimee Williams, Clinical Research Nurse Educator and Clinical Research Nurse at Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, as we celebrate with this year’s Clinical Trials Day theme ‘We Rise’:

We rise to the challenge
As clinical trials become more complex, as we dive headlong into advanced therapeutics, gene therapies and cellular technologies, we meet obstacles headlong and rise to the challenge of delivering care where science translates to the bedside. We problem solve, we trouble shoot, we critically think, so that the newest therapies are made available to our patients.

We rise against disease
As long as children suffer from illness and disease, our work is never complete. There is always a better way, a new drug, a more streamlined approach to treating illness; our work is never complete.

We rise to meet hope
Often we at the Clinical Research Centre are the last place that parents of children with chronic or palliative illness go to seek a better quality and quantity of life for their children. We offer them hope. Hope for a better future, for less severe symptoms, for time.

So this Clinical Trials Day, as we rise to the challenge of coordinating and delivering clinical trials in the midst of a pandemic; as we battle diseases and offer treatments that we never dreamed possible 10 years ago; as we meet our patients and families with hope and compassion, please join with us and celebrate.

Celebrate the doctors, the allied health staff, the administration officers, the data managers, the study coordinators, the research assistants, and the nurses who work tirelessly to ensure that good quality studies produce good quality data and that amazing new treatments are available to our littlest, bravest, most vulnerable kids.