Unlocking Opportunities: A Research Nurse's Career Journey with Anne Saunderson

 In this episode of Clinical Research Career Conversations, Jo Merrifield speaks with Anne Saunderson, a senior clinical research nurse in the Clinical Infections Research Group at Edinburgh. Anne shares her extensive journey in clinical research, highlighting her experiences in various specialties like cardiac surgery, obstetrics, and infectious diseases. She discusses the hands-on role of research nurses in coordinating trials, from recruitment to data management, and how it blends patient care with scientific progress. Anne reflects on the opportunities research has provided, from ground-breaking fertility treatments to working on Ebola trials. She encourages those interested in research to pursue it at any stage in their career, emphasizing how research is integral to advancing healthcare. 

Transcript

 Hello, welcome to another episode of Clinical Research Career Conversations brought to you by Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility. I am Jo Merrifield, and in this episode, I am speaking with Anne Saunderson, a senior clinical research nurse based in the Clinical Infections Research Group in Edinburgh. We had a great conversation about her career to date and the opportunities she has been able to pursue through her roles in research. Enjoy.  

 I'm here today with Anne, who's going to speak to us about her really interesting career in research. So maybe Anne, could you quickly kind of introduce yourself and what role you're currently in?  

Yeah, at the moment, I'm working full time at the Western General Hospital in infectious diseases, and I'm one of the senior research nurses with the team. It's a team of eight, and there's four of us senior.  So we have, well, we have about over 20 studies now, and what happens is, once we've got to the stage that we're actually accepted as a site for a study and we're about to get up and running, then that study or that trial would be allocated to one of the senior staff, and we pick up and run with it. And basically we work with the sponsor and make sure that the site is ready, recruitment is planned, we have everything organised, from the databases set up, that the team are ready, and then we get the training organised and basically we coordinate the whole thing from the beginning right through to recruiting the participants, making sure that everything's going smoothly, checking the data. And just all the follow up that's involved.  So it's quite, it's quite interesting actually. You see it from nothing or an idea right through to it being completed. But everybody knows about the studies and everybody can be involved, but the studies that I'm involved in coordinating are very much my responsibility to make sure that if there's any glitches or hassles. It's also for the sponsor to be just dealing with one person at a time, rather than who is it in the team that I talk to? If they’re off, what do I do?  

Yeah, it must be nice to have that kind of ownership of a study and see it from the beginning to the end.  
 

Yeah, but on the other hand, it's actually also very good that you don't have to remember everything, because it means that the other studies that one of the other staff are involved in, I can go to them and say, I'm really not very clued up about that and did I fill out the database correctly. Could you just go over that bit again And it's kind of reassuring that there's always somebody else that you can go to that's clued up. You've not got 20 odd studies to retain all that information.  

Oh, that's good. Kind of a supportive team that you can work with.  

Yeah, it’s really really good.  

Brilliant. So you're currently a senior research nurse. How long have you been involved in research and when did your career in research start?  

I know, I was I was trying to think, you know, somebody else has asked me this not that long ago, you've been a research nurse for a long time. And I guess in nursing, I started in the 80s, and when we were doing our training, there was an element of practice and checking and if something worked really well, then that became the normal practice, but it wasn't formal research.  And I remember when we qualified as our general training, I remember the tutor saying research is going to become more and more important and, of course, as quite junior nurses, you know, we kind of thought, well, you know, we'll wait and see what all this research is about.  
 And then very quickly it became, we can't do anything unless we've got evidence and we need to prove that that medication really works as well as it does, and on a large scale of trials. Or that practice - is that the correct practice for nursing care? And then, so I realised as a staff nurse, that was becoming more and more important. And also I did my midwifery training as well, and of course that was immensely important to have research there.  But I wasn't formally involved in research until I was working in cardiac surgery, and there was an opportunity to go to the emergency department. They wanted particularly a cardiac nurse or an ITU nurse because it was involving people with pulmonary oedema that were coming in to the emergency department - to resus in particular - very acutely unwell, and they were trying to work out, do we give this drug? Do we put them on a ventilator? Do we just give them oxygen?  And basically that's what we were doing and they were randomised to one of the three. Throughout the UK, they were very much doing you know, different practices. None of them wrong, but they just wanted to absolutely home in on what's right and what should we all be doing.  
And I suddenly thought, this is really clever, this is what we should be doing with everything. And I think that was just like the moment I thought, this is amazing, and I am just a part of this and it was really exciting.  

Brilliant. So was that a formal role or just something that happened?
 

No, I actually was seconded part time, so I worked in cardiac surgery for so many hours, and I worked in the ED for a period of time. So that was very much my first research nurse post.  And then after that I thought, hmm, maybe I could do this full time, and that's when I went to obstetrics and gynae to do fertility research and then it just rolled on from there.  

So it sounds like you've worked in quite a few different specialities through your career, but I guess that underlying fundamentals for research is what is similar regardless of what speciality you're in. And it must be really interesting to have the opportunity to work in different areas.  

Yeah, and I think that's the thing, you know. We always see, as nurses, I mean, anybody in the medical profession, you've got your specialties and that's the area that you work in. And if you specialise, you have to go down that path. But with research, if you're a research nurse, you can then become a research nurse in other areas because the specialty is research and how you actually work, and how trials are conducted or data is managed. So that's a slightly different type of nursing in some ways.  So as much as I've been in cardiac surgery and I went to the ED because of my experience in that area - I had worked in ITU - but then I moved on to obstetrics and gynaecology to do fertility because I was a midwife from my past as well. But I had the research and that was what was more important. And then obviously went on to where I am now and infectious diseases.  

That's brilliant. I think there's a bit of a misconception that when you become a research nurse, you kind of remove yourself from the patient. Is that the case? Or…?  

I would say absolutely not in my case. But you could do, you could choose to do that, and I have chosen not to because the bottom line is I like working with patients. And I think that is the really exciting thing for us. We can get the best of both worlds. And we've just been running a flu vaccine in our department. And all these people are healthy volunteers, but they are coming from all walks of life and all ages, and we're getting to speak to them and we're running clinics and it's really interesting.  And then we've got another trial where people are really, really sick and we go to the ward to recruit them. So we're still involved and we're still part of the clinical teams as well. So I think we're very lucky that we're part of both of them.  

Yeah. And obviously you’re research nurse in infectious diseases just now. Does that mean, were you doing that when the COVID pandemic hit?  

I was actually in Obs and Gynae, so I was doing fertility. I was actually coordinating the male contraception trial at that point. So what happened was they closed down all the research unless people were in a clinical trial and they were on medication because they couldn't suddenly stop it.  So from my point of view, everything stopped, but the male contraception trial, so as long as one day a week, I was making sure that everything was running smoothly and people were getting the medication and the checks were being done clinically, then it was fine. And then we were all redirected to work in different areas.  So I ended up spending some of my time in the Royal, but a lot of the time in St John's and it was quite a scary time, you know, but it was also quite amazing because that is when you realise, wow, you know, research is such a big thing.  So suddenly we just went all crazy trying to run trials, to make sure that we found out more about COVID, but also what would work to alleviate symptoms and ultimately the vaccine, that we saw people getting it, or severe conditions.  So Oxford University set up RECOVERY, which most people have heard about, and we just hit the road running and we basically sat at night reading everything and then went in the next day and started it. And there was a few of us that were involved with the on-call, which again, was really interesting because we had to get really clued up about RECOVERY. And then anybody in the UK that was running the trial, if they had a problem or an issue or a query, they phoned this on-call line and there was about half a dozen of us from the research team in Edinburgh, and we were on-call to answer the questions. So the pressure there was obviously worse than running up and down the ward in St John's sometimes.  

Yes, I can imagine. 
 

But, again, really interesting, because again, all the people that I spoke to on the phone, I mean, what you saw on the television in London was really happening, you know, and it was just absolutely awful for them. But they had this hope that we were going to find some medication or prove that a certain treatment was going to be beneficial to the patients. So research was very much top of the agenda.  

Yeah, definitely. I think it really showed the power that research has, and it moves so quickly, really. So that's really interesting. It sounds like in your career you've had quite a few opportunities to do different things. Are there any other opportunities or things that you probably felt you wouldn't have got? What opportunities has research given you, do you think?  
 

Yeah, I think, you know, I've said that often to people, you know, I am very fortunate that I have, I don't know what the word is. I've stumbled across opportunities or they’ve come my way, just because of the job that I'm in, and they wouldn't have come if I had been clinical.  When I worked, you know, in Obs and Gynae, I was involved with the ovarian cryopreservation programme. And it was in the early stages, so we coordinated it for the whole of the UK and then other sites came on. But that was very much in the research stages where young people, young females, who were going through treatment for cancer, if there was going to be damage to their ovaries and potentially never be able to have children, there was a new procedure of stripping the ovaries, freezing, hopefully at a later stage to reimplant and basically kickstart their ovaries in a very simple way.  
But we were at the very early stages, but I was really fortunate that I started off at the early stages and saw all these young people coming through. Well it's about six years ago now, we did the first transplant back into somebody, and they had a beautiful baby. And that was an amazing situation that we came from… Will this work? It's all science, very much in the lab, will this happen? Could we do this? To then, it actually happened and it's been happening all over Europe for quite a while, but it was the first in the UK. And for our team, you know, everybody - medics, scientists and myself - it was just like, this is amazing, you know, it is possible, and has given hope to lots of young people. And it's now becoming more, it's not completely clinical practice, but it is being offered to very young children, to their parents when they get the diagnosis, and it gives them that hope that maybe in the future…  I think also it gives them that hope that their children will survive their treatment and I think, as much as it was research, I think it's just that bit of, well, actually, they know what they're doing and maybe things are going to be OK from a clinical side as well as from the research side, yeah.  

That must be really satisfying to be able to see the results of the work you put in, obviously the hours and years of work that goes in and then to see these things actually happen. 

Yes, and I think, I think the scientists particularly, they worked so hard and they do so much just repetitive stuff in the lab and continually analysing data and searching, and then when it actually comes to fruition and then patients benefit, you think this is quite amazing, isn't it? It is incredible.  

To be part of that is just incredible, isn't it?
 

So that was really good and I very much enjoyed being part of that. But the other big thing was during the Ebola crisis. Again, Oxford University were running one of the trials in Liberia and Sierra Leone. And they were looking for research nurses, and again, I was very fortunate. I just said, oh, I'd be interested if my team will let me go, you know, and it was all very laid back, and the next thing I was going to training to get into all my gear and went with a team to Sierra Leone to be part of a clinical trial in in one of the Ebola treatment centres.  

That’s amazing.

An amazing experience, amazing, yeah. And working in a completely different culture under completely different conditions, and how research can be adapted, but still have the integrity of the data and be able to say we are following all the rules and regulations. But yeah, that was an utterly experience.  

So how long were you out there for?

We were only there for six weeks because, because of the intensity of the situation, the teams only went for six weeks and they kept changing because even putting your PPE on, you become complacent. That was proven that by six weeks you start to not pay attention or get a bit sloppy or just not concentrate. And because of heat and because of the situation being so acute, they said six weeks is the maximum, yeah.  

Wow, that must have been fascinating.  

It was an amazing six weeks, yes. And even from a team point of view, you know, we were sent with a team, but we came… the medics were, you know, from all over. We weren't all from Edinburgh. The two of us nurses-wise, we were from Edinburgh, but everybody else came from outwith. Actually, we had a doctor from Europe and a doctor from Canada.  

So we didn't know each other, so we had to get to know each other to work so intensely together, and stay together in very different conditions, you know, sleeping in tents. Having work in your wellies is quite different but it’s very supportive and amazing.  

So six weeks isn't that long to kind of build up that team dynamic to get things done. And I guess that was pre-COVID, wasn't it? So I guess that gave you quite a lot of advantage really, especially with the PPE and trying to work in those really stressful conditions.  

Yeah, and I think it was preparation for COVID, yeah, because when they then said you've got to put this gear on, I thought, well, I've done this before, you know, it's not alien. And people were getting, you know, oh my goodness, I'm really hot and oh there's too much gear on, but having worked in West Africa, this is actually fine. Let's just get on with the job.  

Wow, that's fascinating. What a career you've had. It’s great.  
So if someone was to come to you, maybe a nurse or someone outwith nursing, and say, actually I'm interested in a career in clinical research, what would your advice to them be or would you recommend it? What would you say to someone?  

I would highly recommend it and I guess the words are go for it, you know. I think if you are really interested in progress in any shape or form, research is absolutely for you. But I think the big thing is you can do your job and do research at the same time. So you can go into an area and still work in your specialty, but you can still very much be part of the advancement of science, and I think if you get that opportunity, it's absolutely wonderful.  And I don't think it matters where you do it in your career. At first we used to say, oh, don't do it too early because you need a bit of background experience, and I think that's important, but I think it doesn't need to be that you've got ten years of experience to go into it. I think if it's the right thing for you, just go for it.  And I think also, there's also often opportunities in wards where, for instance, our team go in and we're part of a trial. And I would say to people, if there's a team coming in and they're running a trial and it's particularly in your ward or your specialty or your unit, is to ask to be involved, to ask to know more about it. It's good to know what we're doing, why we're doing it.  

And we rely, don't we, on the clinical workforce to refer people and to let us know about it.  

That is the big thing. If we didn't have the people on the ground floor, as it were, telling us about patients… They're absolutely amazing, a lot of the staff, at just saying, can I just… and we often get huge amounts of patients for trials, just because people are getting in touch with us. So that is really helpful.  

That's brilliant. Well, thank you so much for speaking to me today. It's been fascinating hearing about your career so far.  
I really enjoyed speaking with Anne about the opportunities and experiences research has given her throughout her career. This is why I love these conversations. No two careers are the same, and research seems to open so many doors for people. Thanks again to Anne, and I hope you enjoyed listening. Until next time, bye.