Intern Feature Friday: Meet Naumana

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Hi there, my name is Naumana and I'm currently a student at Western University in the Clinical Trials Management program. I completed my internship as a Clinical Trial Associate Assistant with the Office of Innovation and Research at Grand River.

During my internship, my main priority was working on a retrospective study. [It was a] really good learning experience for me and taught me a lot of new things on how clinical trials work. By working on this study, I got to learn how to read and understand different study protocol and I also learned a lot of new things about cancer and the role that nurses and clinical associates play in a hospital setting in clinical trials. I also learned how to read patient charts and doctor's notes through programs such as Cerner and Opus and I was also able to learn how to use a data entry program. I also got to attend monitor visits and I even had one-on-one meetings with the monitor from the sponsor team which was really interesting and a really good learning experience for me. Overall this experience alone has impacted my future career path because I was given the responsibility to learn and do a study on my own which gave me a good understanding of how my work life would possibly be in the future as a Clinical Trial Associate.

I would highly recommend a summer internship at Grand River Hospital in the clinical trials department. There are so many different learning opportunities here. Just over the past few months, I learned how to conduct a retrospective study so I was able to shadow all of the different associates and through this I learned some of the administrative tasks that are always done in the hospital. I also got to see how the ethical aspect works in the clinical trials and I was also able to actually shadow and do the patient visits with the associates in the hospital and I also got to attend different site initiation visits and monitor visits and I also learned how to make source documents and I got to learn about more about the different online databases that the clinical associates work with. So, overall I got to experience a lot of different aspects of clinical trials in such a short time and I think I'm ending my internship with a lot of valuable experience that will definitely help me.

I'd also just like to say thank you to Carla, Sarah, Carol and all the other clinical associates who took the time out of their busy day to help me learn new things. Cerner Canada's generous support allowed me to be a part of this amazing project. This funding gave me the opportunity to build my clinical research skills at Grand River Hospital and donations in support of innovation and research allow Grand River Hospital to play a leading role in training the next generation of researchers and clinicians. Thank you Cerner Canada.

By supporting innovation and research you are lighting the spark that ignites new discoveries and a healthier future for us all.