The Beauty of Clinical Trials, and why I love being part of the industry

More than a paycheck

When was the last time you stopped for a moment to reflect on your Professional Life? Are you fulfilled by your career and what you do for a living? Do you feel like you have fulfillment beyond your paycheck? Even as a top performing salesperson for my organization, something was missing that always left me searching for more.  That ‘something” can be broken down and described in one single word: purpose.  

Purpose for me is more than earning a living. I’ve been fortunate (and lucky) throughout my professional career, and I’ve gotten to the point where I wanted more than just a comfortable lifestyle. Yes, there is no denying that a paycheck is important, but money is only as good as what it can buy and what I was searching for cannot be bought.  

I, probably like most people, have a desire to feel a sense of importance. I'd like this sense of importance to transcend my job; I'd like to be important to society. Obviously, importance can have many different forms and variations from person to person, but what I was yearning for was knowing that my daily efforts were leading to the betterment of humankind. I wanted to know that what I was doing mattered and that my professional contributions would leave the world a better place. That professional purpose for me was non-existent, until recently, when I began working in Clinical Trials.  

How it came to be

For me, the feeling of professional emptiness was never so obvious as when my wife, a doctor of physical therapy at a long-term care facility, would come home from her ten-hour shift and tell me about her day. She has always had tremendous pride in her occupation, but her pride reached new heights as she spent the last 15 months working in a Covid Unit, treating the most vulnerable and fragile members of society. I should also add that she worked the most recent nine months carrying our second child. (Side note: women really are superheroes!)

Admittedly, her professional life was extremely hectic, stressful, and scary, but she had a purpose. Each day, she was on a mission, and each night, I lived vicariously through her stories.

Every night when she got home and changed out of her full-body PPE, she would describe her day with incredible passion, empathy, pride, and purpose. She would tell me about helping elderly patients learn to walk again after they had been bedridden for six weeks while battling Covid. She would tell me about how one patient took his first steps in over a year after suffering a stroke, or how a different patient was able to speak again after being non-verbal for four months, and she did this all while carrying a baby and surrounded by the horror and uncertainty of a new, deadly virus.  

While my wife was understandably nervous on a daily basis, she had a sense of pride for her profession that I never felt. It made me re-examine my professional life, but more importantly, it made me reevaluate what made me happy and what I wanted out of my career. 

I took a long look in the mirror, and my head was filled with the same types of questions over and over. Do I have a purpose at work beyond simply earning my paycheck? Am I happy with how I make a living? Am I proud of myself and the contributions I am making to the world?

Before becoming involved in Clinical Trials, I could not honestly answer “yes” to all of those questions. I felt like I was going through the motions of work and not putting my heart and soul into it. All I know is that I didn't have the passion for my career that my wife has for hers.

From interactions to trials 

In 2020, I interviewed and turned down offers from over ten companies. I talked to so many recruiters and hiring managers that it was actually starting to become exhausting. All the interviews were basically the same. In fact, they all felt mundane and cliché. These companies were not the; I was the. I was not excited about the solution they provided to their customers.   

At the time of these interviews, I had a secure job with an established company and a very good boss, but I knew I was not proud of my life. I wanted to find my purpose, but at the same time, I did not want to leave one unhappy situation for another. If I was going to make a move, it had to be perfect. It had to be for a career that would afford me the opportunity to speak about my profession the same way my wife speaks about hers.

At this point, I was completely over interviewing, so much so that I almost told the recruiter from the Clinical Trial organization that reached out to me that I did not want to move forward in the process. Lucky for me, a company named Medrio is incredibly persistent. I reluctantly agreed to interview with them, and the conversation that happened next completely changed the way I view myself professionally.  

I remember the Skype call with Medrio’s Chief Commercial Officer like it was yesterday. I remember him describing the position in tremendous detail, and I remember how he stressed the importance of the company culture. He spoke to me about the product, the passion of the team he oversaw, and the commitment from his peers on the Leadership Team. All of this was intriguing, and spiked my interest, but it was what he said next that stopped me dead in my tracks. The CCO told me, “This is a career you can really feel good about. You’ll have the opportunity to help create life-saving drugs that can change people’s lives.” That statement was so profound and game changing that instantly made me want to join his team, and it is a moment that I reflect on it daily.    

From that moment on everything changed in my life. I found my purpose in my professional life. 

Clinical trials and me 

While I have spent almost all of my career working exclusively in Communications and Digital Interactions on behalf of pharmaceutical manufacturers, I never felt a direct connection to the patients they served. I knew that the technology solutions I provided helped the pharmaceutical companies reach their patients, but the multiple levels of separation prevented the personal connection for which I was searching. 

I worked in pharmaceuticals for twelve years prior to becoming involved in Clinical Trials. And I, like most people, never appreciated them for what they are. Clinical Trials are the foundation for the entire pharmaceutical industry.    

In my twelve years of industry experience, I never stopped for a single second to think about how a life-saving therapeutic comes into existence. It’s actually embarrassing for me to look back at how na?ve I was.

People outside the industry might not understand the importance of Clinical Trials. In fact, sometimes I feel like my industry lives secretly in the basement of the Pharmaceutical Industry; but Clinical Trials are solely responsible for the corner office on the top floor. They pave the way for life-saving therapies. Clinical Trials are the blood, sweat, and tears of every life saving therapy ever created. They are the early morning training sessions at the gym, while everyone else is still asleep. Yes, it is true that name- brand drugs get the flashy commercials, but those commercials are funded through the hard-work and dedication of Clinical Trials.   

While people think about those commercials and talk to their Healthcare Provider about what they saw on television or read online, the real work is continuing in the form of Clinical Trials to make the above mentioned possible.  

The reason that almost everyone fails to acknowledge Clinical Trials is the very reason that I never paid them the respect they deserve. Clinical Trials are victims of the Iceberg Principle or the Iceberg Illusion. This is the same illusion that plagues nearly every other successful organization in the world today.

Unknowledgeable and uninformed people only see the highlights, or in the case of clinical trials, the final results. They fail to do any independent research in order to understand everything that it took to achieve that success. Think about this concept in terms of people, rather than companies. Jealous individuals rarely ask successful people for advice. Jealous people are much more likely to begrudge successful people and form their own unjustified, untrue opinions. I would actually go as far to say that this is, in large part, exactly what has caused many pharmaceutical companies to have negative public images.

Most people will never know that only one in 5,000 new drugs will ever make it from conception to market. People will never understand that each time a drug is successfully brought to market, it has already cost the manufacturer an average of 1.5 billion dollars. They can’t comprehend that the failure rate for a new drug is 99.9 percent. They won't consider the black hole in which pharmaceutical companies routinely find themselves.

No, most people won’t do any of that. But they will take advantage of the final products. They will use the therapies that their healthcare providers prescribe, and most importantly, they will continue to live longer, healthier, happier lives. Thanks to the research we do in Clinical Trials, people will survive. And that is why I absolutely love what I do!

Clinical Trials lets me be a small part of something so much bigger. Clinical Trials allows me to play an important role in drug development, and I’m proud of that. When I talk about my profession now, I talk about it with the same passion and vigor that my wife uses to describe her occupation. It’s safe to say, I have found my purpose!

To all of my fellow Basement Dwellers in Clinical Trials, I appreciate you and I thank you. I am so proud to be one of you, and, most importantly, I’m honored to help all people live longer, healthier, happier lives.

Matthew Spott, May 20, 2021