Who Does What at the Site

Part of Sub-Investigator (SUBI) Training: Working With the Site Team.

About 1 minutes. Free, in your language, no account needed.

You are one part of a team, and mostly not the busiest

The coordinator holds the operational picture. Schedules, windows, supplies, queries and the paperwork trail.

They usually know the study's daily rules better than you do. Treating them as admin support is wrong, and it is expensive.

What the coordinator needs from you

Laboratory results reviewed on time. Attributions and severity gradings done. Queries answered. Dose changes and stops told to them as they happen.

Most site delays trace to an investigator signature or judgment that is outstanding.

Tell them about decisions immediately

A dose change you made in clinic affects dispensing. It affects accountability, the CRF, and often the next visit.

A decision known only to you propagates nowhere.

Respect the windows they are managing

Coordinators are tracking visit windows constantly. "Can we do it next week" is often the difference between compliant and a deviation.

Ask what the window is before you offer a date.

The pharmacy and the laboratory have constraints too

Preparation times, stability windows, courier cut-offs. A decision made at 16:45 on a Friday may not be deliverable.

Say when you do not know

A coordinator acting on a confident wrong answer from an investigator is a preventable deviation. "I will check" is a complete answer.

Handover matters when you rotate

Clinical trainees rotate. A participant mid-study needs the next sub-investigator to know three things. Where they are. What has happened. What is still outstanding.

Delegation log entries end and begin; the clinical continuity has to be handed over deliberately.