Communication Makes Or Breaks Your Clinical Trial

By Gary Zammit | Forbes Books Author for Forbes Books | AUTHOR POST | Paid Program

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A consistent free flow of information is at the core of any great R&D organization—and yet, when I speak on building successful clinical research organizations, communication is one of the topics I’m asked about most. The interest from other researchers suggests that effective communication in clinical trials is both elusive and valued in R&D, and that it may be one area where organizations are most frequently falling short. It’s one thing to proclaim that an organization values open communication. It’s another thing to put it into practice.

Good Communications Needs a Good Plan

Effective project management is central to the successful execution of any clinical trial. That requires a project plan—and that project plan should always include a communication plan. The project manager must lay out how everyone will communicate and how frequently: Will there be weekly meetings? Who will attend? Where will they take place? How will the contents of the meeting be memorialized?

More generally, the communication plan identifies who communicates with whom. If you have a project team of 10 people and 50 different investigator sites, who on the project team is communicating with those sites? One of the most important things is ensuring there is a single, reliable central point of contact.

Further, meetings must be carefully structured. Make sure the right people are at the table. Set an agenda, start and end on time, and memorialize what was discussed. Meeting minutes should identify action items, the people responsible for acting on them, and due dates. This documentation is critical not only for keeping things moving but also because it may be relevant for regulatory approval processes later.

Finally, it’s worth noting that too much information can be just as damaging as too little. Unnecessary details can slow people down or cause confusion, and endless email chains can clutter inboxes, leaving important messages to get lost. That’s why the communication plan must also ensure that everybody gets the information they need without being overburdened by the information they don’t.

The Ultimate Communication Test: When Things Go Wrong

Communicating failure is never fun, but it’s when things go wrong that transparency becomes even more important—especially in clinical research, where compliance, regulatory, and quality issues need to be voiced immediately so that meaningful corrective action can be taken. In R&D, corrective and preventive action plans (CAPAs) are a way of life. Anybody within the organization should be ready to raise the red flag if there is a problem. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable doing so, the issue will only fester and complicate future efforts.

That’s why organizations need structured mechanisms for surfacing concerns, including formal pathways that give people a safe, clear way to flag issues without navigating personal or political risk. A culture that encourages communication around failure is just as important. It’s leadership’s responsibility to set the tone and spearhead this movement by practicing empathetic listening, engaging in one-on-ones, and generally encouraging collaborative dialogue. When leaders model this behavior, others follow suit.

Communication in Clinical Trials Should Be a Given

You can have a great team of A-players and the best clinical trial protocols and standing operating procedures, but if people aren’t communicating, those things won’t matter. Communication in clinical trials is everybody’s responsibility; it’s not just the job of HR, the internal communications team, or the team lead. In a well-functioning organization, every person takes accountability for communicating. However, it’s up to the organization to create the structure and environment where that communication is possible.

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