Learning the Ropes as a Medical Researcher

While there, she worked as a clinical researcher, helping in the FDA approval process for phase three medicines. We sat down with Charlotte to get the full story.

Over spring break I worked at Spectrum Medical, an orthopedic clinic in my town, with the Research Department doing clinical research. Clinical research is when certain drugs are trying to be approved by the FDA, but before they can be approved and go onto the market they have to go through four phases of testing. All of the clinical research I was involved with were phase three drugs meaning they had already been tested for safety and dosage amount, and are currently being tested to see the efficacy of the drugs. While I was there, I was recruiting for a knee injection study by speaking with people living with osteoarthritis and were interested in the research study. However, since it was a research study, I had to make sure they were eligible by asking certain medical questions and screen them to fit the criteria. Also, I would help with EKGs, making and filing charts, learning how to fill in the research database, taking the patients to x-ray, and much more.  

My favorite part of this experience was being able to observe and help with a knee injection. I helped prep the patient but setting up the machine that circulates ice cold water around the knee to numb it before the actual medicine is injected into the joint. Since I want to go into sports medicine, I was super excited to see how a knee injection is prepared and executed.

One thing I will never forget is the kindness and the patience from the ladies I worked with. They were so kind and showed me how to file charts and were open to me asking questions.

I want to go into the sports medicine field, so this internship was valuable for me because I gained experience and learned more about orthopedics. I learned about the knee anatomy and how to read x-rays for arthritis. This will help me on my path to medical school, and my new knowledge will be useful again when I go back to work for them this summer!