Development and implementation of an on-demand competency-based onboarding program for clinical research professionals in academic medicine.

Over the past 7 years, Duke has implemented competency-based job classifications for clinical research professionals (CRPs) with a defined pathway for career advancement. The workforce is defined specifically as the collection of staff employed across the clinical research enterprise to operationalize clinical research and human participatory protocols through the hands-on conduct of protocol activities including participant enrollment, regulatory coordination, study documentation, data collection and management, and sponsor engagement. The competency framework for this critical workforce laid the foundation for a centrally developed on-demand onboarding program at Duke.

Tackling standardization in clinical research workforce hiring using competency-based job classifications.

In 2016, Duke reconfigured its clinical research job descriptions and workforce to be competency-based, modeled around the Joint Taskforce for Clinical Trial Competency framework. To ensure consistency in job classification amongst new hires in the clinical research workforce, Duke subsequently implemented a Title Picker tool. The tool compares the research unit's description of job responsibility needs against those standardized job descriptions used to map incumbents in 2016.