THE CHALLENGES AND NEEDS OF INVESTIGATORS CONDUCTING A CLINICAL TRIAL: A PILOT SURVEY STUDY

Objective: This study was conducted to identify the challenges and needs in the clinical trial process faced by faculty members of the Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine who were the principal investigator in the clinical trials between years of 2011 and 2016.Material and Method: The survey prepared via "Google Forms" was applied to principal investigators as online and face-to-face. The general challenges experienced in the research process and frequency of challenges were examined in the study. Descriptive statistics of the data set were calculated and frequency analysis, chi-square test and reliability analysis were performed by the IBM SPSS 20.0 program. Results: The survey was applied to 67 principal investigators. Most of investigators conducted the clinical drug study (56.7%). They preferred to receive non-commercial financial support in 57.7% for their studies. Investigators identified the problems and needs they experienced in research processes according to their frequency of living. The investigators requested support for the announcement of partnership requests (88.1%), the creation of the project consortium (76.1%) and the transmission of partnership requests to the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (68.8%). Conclusion: It is thought that the establishment and dissemination of clinical research units will play an important role in solving researchers' problems. It would be useful to repeat this research with a larger sample group in order to create a more precise picture for the investigators' challenges and needs