Volunteer For Clinical, Drug, and Medical Trials Across The UK
Why volunteer for a clinical or medical trial?
Helping you make an informed decision about volunteering
Before deciding on whether you would like to be a paid or patient clinical trial volunteer, please read the following page to discover the what, whys, who’s & where’s of clinical trials. Our aim is to give you a better insight into how well-regulated and committed the pharmaceutical and clinical industry is and how the safety of patients and volunteers is paramount. We also present the potential benefits and negatives of becoming a drug trial volunteer.
Clinical trials safety & ethics
One of the most common questions is how safe a clinical trial is. New treatments being investigated in a clinical study have to undergo extensive, meticulous testing and research in a laboratory before being considered safe to be tested with human volunteers. They also have to be vetted by an Ethics Committee.
Of course, there are always risks of unpleasant or even dangerous side-effects, but they are usually very low and they will always be explained to you in full. You should always feel free to ask any questions you want and expect to receive a clear answer to your full satisfaction.
Remember, the vast majority of drug trials are successful – it’s only a very small minority that go wrong which feature press coverage. And you reserve the right to leave a trial at any time.
Visit our FAQ page for further information as to clinical trial safety.
Of course, there are always risks of unpleasant or even dangerous side-effects, but they are usually very low and they will always be explained to you in full. You should always feel free to ask any questions you want and expect to receive a clear answer to your full satisfaction.
Remember, the vast majority of drug trials are successful – it’s only a very small minority that go wrong which feature press coverage. And you reserve the right to leave a trial at any time.
Visit our FAQ page for further information as to clinical trial safety.
The benefits of registration with Entertrials.co.uk
If, after reading this 'Why Volunteer' page, you want to contribute to medical research and investigational treatments by enroling in a UK clinical research trial of some sort, please visit our clinical drug trial registration page. Registration will give you access to further features such as research trial alerts, a participation checklist, additional information, an opt-in newsletter, and make applying to be a volunteer for a UK medical trial easier. Once registered and logged in, if you see a trial you wish to apply to, your securely-stored contact information will be sent to that particular trial recruiter when you click the apply online button.
Understanding the facts behind drug trials
We also strongly recommend you also read through the Frequently Asked Questions about drug trials page, designed to provide further useful information to consider before applying to be a medical research volunteer. When reading the FAQ page, please pay particular attention to the importance of informed consent and refer to our clinical trial glossary if you do not understand any terms or words you come across on this site:
A clinical trial is a scientific research study into potential new treatments for diseases and medical conditions. New treatments being investigated in a clinical study have to undergo extensive testing and research before being considered safe to be tested with human volunteers.
Trials are, in essence, carefully planned investigational research studies which evaluate the precise benefits and risks of treatments and screening tests on humans, to determine if new medicines and treatments are a safe improvement on what is already available. Each trial will be designed to answer scientific questions and to find better ways to treat individuals with a specific disease or medical condition.
Make a valuable contribution to medical research
As a paid ‘healthy’ or ‘patient’ clinical trial volunteer, you will be making a very valuable contribution to this vital process of test new ways of screening for, preventing, finding, or treating a disease or medical condition. A trial you enter may be designed to help determine such things as the correct dosage, the general safety of a drug, how long a drug may remain in your system, and confirm if a new drug or medicine actually works.
As a paid ‘healthy’ or ‘patient’ clinical trial volunteer, you will be making a very valuable contribution to this vital process of test new ways of screening for, preventing, finding, or treating a disease or medical condition. A trial you enter may be designed to help determine such things as the correct dosage, the general safety of a drug, how long a drug may remain in your system, and confirm if a new drug or medicine actually works.
Clinical trials are also called medical trials, medical research, research studies, clinical studies, or drug studies. Each trial follows a strict protocol which is a detailed written plan that explains why there is a need for the study, what it is intended to do, and how it will be conducted. Each clinical trial protocol has to be approved by an ethics committee before a trial can commence.
Clinical drug and investigational treatment trials are conducted to protect people’s safety, health and well-being. They are rigorously designed to ensure that any drug, medicine, device or treatment actually does what is it meant to do and does not present an unnecessary risk to the user, and is of consistent and reliable quality and quantity.
These medical research studies are the most reliable and best way of testing a new treatment, or of seeing whether one treatment works better than another. A ‘new’ drug or treatment is not necessarily always better, and in some cases worse than what already exists. The purpose of trials is to find faster, more effective and safer drugs/ devices. There is no other reliable way to test if alternative treatments being investigated and researched are an improvement on what is already available, without testing these in a very controlled and regulated way with a small number of volunteers. If a trial is successful, it may result in the approval of new treatment that will save lives and improve the quality of life for thousands, if not millions of people.
Potentially, hundreds of millions of people live longer and have a better quality of life, thanks to the success of this important and necessary medical research process and the contribution of clinical volunteers.
Clinical trials include people of various ages, ethnic groups, and both genders as much as possible. Each clinical trial, however, is unique in its eligibility criteria depending on what is being investigated. The factors that allow someone to participate in a particular clinical trial are called "inclusion criteria", and those that disallow someone from participating are called "exclusion criteria". These criteria are an important principle of medical research, helping to produce reliable results when testing a particular drug or treatment. Some research studies require people with illnesses or conditions (often referred to as patient volunteers), while others need healthy volunteers. The criteria is based on such factors as age, gender, the type and stage of a disease or condition, previous treatment history, and other factors that ensure researchers can get answers to the questions they plan to study.
Trials are currently being conducted all over the world and throughout the UK. Many take place in dedicated purpose built clinical research units that provide an excellent level of service and safety to volunteers. A number of trial units are based in hospital sites, which ensure expert medical attention is quickly at hand if anything should go wrong. The safety and comfort of volunteers is, naturally, of the utmost importance and most research units will hence provide very comfortable lounge and living areas where you can watch videos, play pool, surf the net, get to know other volunteers and generally relax. Meals are often provided and can be of a high standard.
You can use this site to search for trials at various locations throughout the UK. Although the list does not cover all trials currently being run in the UK, we are working at ensuring most will begin to appear on the site soon. This site aims to make it easier to you to find and apply to trial studies in a commutable distance from your location.
- Payment. Volunteers typically receive anything between £30 to £3,000 for their involvement in a UK clinical trial. Generally speaking, Phase 1 trials are for healthy volunteers who will be reimbursed for the time they are involved, so the longer the trial or more time you stay overnight for example, the more you will be reimbursed. Many volunteers we have spoken to agree it is ‘easy money’ and a temporary alternative to part time jobs, with some of the time in a trial being spent playing pool, watching DVD’s, read books, chatting with other volunteers and enjoying other relaxed activities.
- Obtain expert medical care associated with the trial at leading health care facilities, and comprehensive medical check-up without charge.
- Meals: Feedback from volunteers has indicated that some of the Clinical Trials Units (CTU’s) offer some pretty good healthy meals, which better still are without charge.
- Make new friends: new to the UK? Meet other volunteers and strike up new friendships with similar people to yourselves.
- Accommodation: Longer trials will often require overnight stays, which means accommodation without charge.
- Health benefits: If you are a patient volunteer with an ailment, then this is an opportunity to play a more active role in your healthcare and gain access to treatments in research often before they are widely available. This does not mean they are any better or even as good as existing treatments. That is after all why they are being tested, but at least the treatments are generally without charge during the trial and there is the possibility that the treatments are better.
- Help others (and potentially yourself) by contributing to medical research and scientific knowledge.
- Ethical: Each UK drug trial is approved and monitored by an Independent Ethics Committee (IEC) in the EU
- On rare occasions there may be unpleasant, serious or, in very rare cases indeed, even life-threatening side effects to treatment, especially if you are amongst the very first volunteers to trial a drug. It’s worth remembering the vast majority of drug trials are comfortable and only the very small minority of those that go wrong receive press coverage.
- For patient volunteers the clinical treatment may not be effective. The treatment under study does not always turn out to be better than, or even as good as, standard treatment. The researchers hope that it is, but they need to do the study to find out for sure.
- Like existing treatments, the treatment under study may work for some, but not others.
- You may end up receiving a placebo and be placed in the control or reference group who do not receive the trial medicine until after the clinical trial has finished.
- Certain trials or studies may require more of your time and attention than other types of trials or existing treatments, which could mean many trips to the clinic site, a large number of treatments, and hospital stays or complex dosage requirements.
Before any prospective treatment is tested on humans, it is thoroughly investigated and researched through laboratory and model studies to determine if it's safe. It is extremely rare and very unlikely that unsafe treatments would then pass from a laboratory and reach a stage where human testing commences. Once a new treatment has passed lab, and often animal testing, before it can be trialled, investigated through a clinical trial, the trial must be approved and monitored by an Ethics Committee Independent Ethics Committee (IEC) in the EU to make sure the risks are as low as possible and are worth any potential benefits. An Ethics Committee is an independent committee of physicians, statisticians, normal members of the community, and other suitably qualified experts whose task it is to ensure a clinical trial is ethical, as safe as possible, and that the rights of study participants are fully protected. In the UK this industry is regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulation Agency (MHRA).
Good clinical practise
clinical trials need to be set up using the principles of good clinical practice (GCP). These principles have been internationally agreed with the aim of protecting the rights, safety and wellbeing of volunteers and patients, and ensure ethical and quality standards are used in the design, conduct and reporting of trials. The potential risks to a volunteer’s safety, does depend on the type of research trial that is being undertaken. For example a clinical trial of a investigational medicinal product that is a first use of a drug in humans (Phase 1), has far more risks associated than an effectiveness study into a commonly used and marketed drug, which is being used in the same way as it normally is.
clinical trials need to be set up using the principles of good clinical practice (GCP). These principles have been internationally agreed with the aim of protecting the rights, safety and wellbeing of volunteers and patients, and ensure ethical and quality standards are used in the design, conduct and reporting of trials. The potential risks to a volunteer’s safety, does depend on the type of research trial that is being undertaken. For example a clinical trial of a investigational medicinal product that is a first use of a drug in humans (Phase 1), has far more risks associated than an effectiveness study into a commonly used and marketed drug, which is being used in the same way as it normally is.
In the UK and abroad, rigorous procedures have to be taken to ensure that safety and quality are appropriate to the risks of a particular study. While the safety of volunteers should not be compromised, the level of caution required will depend on the individual risk profile of the study.
A very basic way of determining if a drug trial should be safe is to ensure the following:
- The risks of side-effects to the drug being investigated are known and clearly explained to all potential volunteers before they decide to take part – and you as a participating volunteer are happy to accept the risk of these side effects.
- From the information presented and your conversations with the clinical research organisation, you are confident the trial is being monitored carefully to make sure volunteers don’t experience serious side-effects.
- The protocol has been checked to make sure it is good quality science and ethically sound.
- The trial is run by a researcher or and organisation that is well-qualified and experienced at running trials.
Registered users on this site can access a trials checklist from their EnterTrials account. Serious side-effects are generally considered to be very rare indeed, although of course the risks are something to consider before volunteering. Do you have a family to support? What will happen if you are off work longer than expected? You may be at far more risk flying in an airplane, than you are in taking part in a trial, but that does not mean risks do not exist, and hence it is essential you personally weigh up the possible risks and benefits.
Of course, doctors and medical trial researchers cannot make you join a clinical trial – they must get your informed consent to take part. Even after you start in a trial, you can withdraw if you do not feel comfortable or safe.
This is of course a highly subjective and personal question. Extra cash, having hope for a future cure for generations to come, the opportunity to testing a medication that may help even cure a condition you may have, and contributing to research and society in general are just some of the reasons why some people choose to volunteer. The aim of a clinical trial is to gain knowledge about new treatments that might benefit future patients, and that could include you. Is the new treatment being tested actually better, the same as, or worse than existing treatments? Clinical trial research with volunteers aims to answer this fundamental question, during which a volunteer’s safety and good clinical practice are the main concern.
Once you have contacted a clinical trial unit about volunteering, you will need to ensure you are satisfied that the positives outweigh the negatives before giving your informed consent to participate. Many healthy volunteers have gained very positive and often profitable experiences out of being clinical trial volunteers, which is backed by some of the testimonials provided by volunteers using this site.
Interested in medical research, and want to start looking for a trial that suits you, which you are confident is safe and will offer sufficient benefits for your participation:
Then register now and start taking full advantage of the sites features here:
