The Work of a Clinical Research Nurse

Sometimes, I don't feel like a 'real nurse' because I am in pharmaceutical research and not at the bedside hanging IVs all day.  Sometimes, I feel like people want me to be at the bedside in a hospital.  I have always loved the fact that I would be helping develop new drugs and treatments to help the future of medicine, plus I get the cushiest hours and get to do a vast range of work at my job.  And then, things like these are published:

CDC: Prescription Opioid-Related Mortalities Rising Rapidly.

MedPage Today (2/17, Fiore) reported, that the rise in "abuse of and deaths from prescription opioid narcotics has reached epidemic proportions," government officials said today during a CDC event for physicians. Referring to a "comprehensive report on the nation's health released yesterday that showed declining mortality rates for all other conditions, including heart disease and cancer," CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, said that the only mortality statistic "getting worse is death from prescription opioid abuse." Notably, there were more than "27,000 deaths from prescription drug overdoses in 2007, a number that has risen five-fold since 1990," according to the most recent CDC data. 

We do a lot of abuse liability trials.  The drugs involved in the trial are new forms of opioids that have a drug called Naloxone embedded in the center.  Naloxone is a pain medication reversing drug.  So if I were to give you Naloxone and Percocet together, you wouldn't feel much of any effect.  However, when Naloxone is embedded inside a pain medication, it won't be released unless the user crushes the medication.  Then, it will negate the drug effects.  

Sometimes people who are prescribed opioid medication crush theirs because they are in so much pain that they want immediate relief.  Sometimes, people sell their prescriptions to others who abuse them and crush the medication and snort, parachute, or smoke it.  So to combat this, I do many studies that study these new kind of drugs that restrict abuse potential.


This spring, I will be the one leading one of these studies.  I'm excited because these studies are a big deal.  Like a million dollars lies on the lines.  And I will oversee about 100 subjects, 30 employees, and deal with every aspect of the study production.  It will be stressful because when we give the subjects the medication, we do blood draws, vital signs, capnography, pupillometry, etc. every 10 minutes and you can't be more than a couple minutes late on your assessment or it's a deviation, and you have to submit a form to a clinical research governing company, which could have the potential of submitting it to the FDA.  But it will be exciting, and I like being able to do huge science experiments for a living.