Research Registered Nurse, Infectious Diseases

Research Registered Nurse, Department of Internal Medicine - Infectious Diseases

Why UT Southwestern?

With over 75 years of excellence in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, UT Southwestern is committed to excellence, innovation, teamwork, and compassion. As one of the world's foremost research institutions, UT Southwestern Medical Center is known for our life-changing research that has led us to 6 Nobel Prizes. With a Financial Analyst career at UT Southwestern Medical Center, you will be a key part of our multidisciplinary research facility with opportunities to work with leaders in patient care and medical research.

Job Summary

Join a dynamic clinical research team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center supporting Principal Investigators in cutting-edge clinical trials across various disease areas, including COVID-19, RSV, HIV, and Influenza. As a Research RN, you will play a pivotal role in delivering patient care while driving impactful research that contributes to medical advancements. This position involves close collaboration with cross-functional teams, including principal investigator, physicians, clinical research coordinators, and research staff, to ensure the smooth execution of Clinical Trials. You will provide nursing care, assessments, and data collection for clinical research studies, while guiding nursing staff and resolving patient care issues. Responsibilities will include administering and managing investigational medications, documenting patient conditions, biospecimen sample handling and collection, vitals, patient counseling data collection, safety reporting and adherence to research protocols. You will also train other research nurses in tasks you commonly perform in accordance with research protocols. You may also support clinical research coordinators for audits, relevant study procedures, and perform other duties as needed. In this position, the candidate we seek will assist with clinical trials that focus on patient outcomes and placebo-controlled research intervention medication trials. You will support life-changing research while building your expertise in regulatory and research protocol compliance, data collection, and patient care in a fast-paced, innovative environment.

Experience and Education

Minimum Requirements

• Graduate of NLN (National League for Nursing) approved Nursing program, licensure as Registered Nurse by Board of Nurse Examiners for the State of Texas is required.
• Two years clinical nursing experience required.
• Clinical research nursing experience is highly desirable but not required.
• May substitute relevant clinical research experience for clinical nursing experience on one-on-one basis.
• Certification(s): Current Basic Life Support (BLS) certification through a course accredited by the American Heart Association (AHA) or American Red Cross (ARC) is required.

Preferred Requirements

• Preferred qualifications for the Research RN role include bilingual abilities, with Spanish proficiency being a plus.
• Previous clinical research experience is valued, as well as certifications like ACLS or BLS.

Job Duties

Nursing:

• Performs nursing care, nursing assessment, and data collection for clinical research studies.
• May provide working direction for research activities to nursing staff and/or other non-licensed medical or office support personnel.
• Assists in resolving problems relating to patient care and acts as a liaison between the research team and other institutional stakeholders.
• Gives counsel to patients with respect to medical conditions and provides appropriate guidance related to research activities, per the study protocol or under the supervision of the principal investigator.
• Assists in developing procedures for inpatient and outpatient research activities, follows protocols in the scheduling of tests and procedures; may administer experimental and non-experimental medication and procedures under physician/principal investigator guidance.

Patient and study management:

• Recruits patients for research studies ensuring subject eligibility, screens patients, tracks patients' data and explains the study purpose and content of each study.
• Duties performed may include one or more of the following core functions: a) Directly interacting with or caring for patients; b) Directly interacting with or caring for human-subjects research participants; c) Regularly maintaining, modifying, releasing, or similarly affecting patient records (including patient financial records); or d) Regularly maintaining, modifying, releasing or similarly affecting human-subjects research records.
• Obtains informed consent and follows the proper consenting process for patients and/or family members.
• Monitors and evaluates patients involved in research studies within scope of practice, including their response to therapy or intervention.
• May assist in inventory of investigational medication, devices or approved medication for each protocol and acts as liaison between investigator pharmacy as each protocol requires, as per protocol requirements.

Data and regulatory management:

• May train other research nurses in specialized skills and knowledge necessary to perform variety of basic and complex research data collection and nursing care; may provide in-service education to staff members as appropriate.
• May assist in clinical research data collection for pharmaceutical studies, Federal studies, or investigator-initiated studies in patient records (paper and electronic), sponsors documents (electronic and paper) and other forms for data collection, such as: medical histories, data collection of patients' charts for retrospective review studies, patient physiologic performance results and laboratory determinations, calculations of derived information, and maintenance of general research protocols and complex protocols.
• May also report information to other physicians, institutional stakeholders and granting agencies.
• May collect, label, store and/or ship blood, serum, urine, and other specimens for analysis per the protocol requirements.
• Documents and updates the physician and sponsors on the condition of the study participants including possible side effects of therapy.
• Reports adverse events through appropriate sources per the policy of the protocol and the University Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulations.
• May assist in organizing and preparing collected data for subsequent publication as appropriate.
• May coordinate, as per the requirements of the study team, regulatory aspects for each study, which may include but is not limited to budgets, contracts, IRB submissions, maintenance of critical regulatory documents and other required committee submissions.
• May assist in internal and/or external audit requests.
• Occasionally, attends and participates in out-of-town meetings or scientific conferences as a representative of the research team.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

Work requires use of considerable judgment in application of procedures, nursing assessment techniques, practices, and policies to work problems, organization, and administration of research or outpatient clinic. Work requires frequent contact with physicians, residents, fellows, allied health personnel, affiliated institutions, and other medical and/or non-medical office support personnel to facilitate patient care and research data collection. Work requires the determination of methods or approaches to work problems. Requires a working knowledge of federal, state, and local laws and regulations governing research. Ability to provide customer service focus . Interpersonal and teamwork skills to contribute to objectives of organization. Adaptability/flexibility to react positively to changes in work environment. Initiative to improve productivity and quality of work. Ability to plan and organize work in logical and efficient manner.

Working Conditions

Work is performed mostly primarily in clinical environment. The incumbent may be exposed to body fluids and infectious diseases.

To learn more about the benefits UT Southwestern offers visit https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/employees/hr-resources/

For general COVID-19 information, applicants should visit https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/covid-19/work-on-campus/

This position is security-sensitive and subject to Texas Education Code 51.215, which authorizes UT Southwestern to obtain criminal history record information. UT Southwestern Medical Center is committed to an educational and working environment that provides equal opportunity to all members of the University community. As an equal opportunity employer, UT Southwestern prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, or veteran status.