By Kirsten Millar
Crystal Robinson, a Nurse Practitioner at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, is helping to lead clinical trials as the team manager.
“In our zone, we're a little bit unique in that we're a jack of all trades. We do cardiology trials and nephrology trials, oncology trials, and we're just starting rheumatology trials. We just kind of do it all. We have seven clinical trials in operation and now we have two more in startup. Then we have three registries. And then on top of that, we also do investigator-led projects,” says Robinson, who has worked as a nurse for 17 years.
“Since I joined, our team has more than doubled,” says Robinson.
In 2017, Robinson wanted a change and took a job as a research coordinator at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. During her 2017 stint in research, Robinson had proposed a position for a manager who could step in and help with the clinical work when necessary, but it didn’t happen. “At the time, it was kind of unheard of,” says Robinson.
In 2019, Robinson switched to a role as an acute care NP in Orthopedic Surgery at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. But Robinson was drawn back to research and in 2022, began her current position overseeing and helping with clinical trials and research at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital.
It’s a role Robinson is perfectly suited to. “I've loved doing clinical trials ever since I started back in 2017. I always knew that I wanted to come back to it. And now in this role, I can initiate the changes that I wanted to when I was a coordinator, because even then I wanted to grow and find more trials. As a coordinator, I really wasn't in the position to make those changes, but now I can.”
The two things that matter most to Robinson in her work are her team and her patients. “There have been a lot of changes, but I'm happy to say that my team is probably the most robust that it has been,” she says.
“We’re able to do more studies that can reach more patients. In oncology, especially, sometimes these treatments are only available through research and can be a patient’s last resort for treatment. They may not have other options,” continues Robinson. “And we're bringing new treatments in for end-stage renal disease and for people who have had heart attacks. We're paving that road so that at some point, the drug that we're testing now might end up saving more lives.”
“A lot of people think that research means you're just a guinea pig. But nothing would be here without research. You couldn't even take Aspirin or Tylenol without having research behind it. We’re seeing the growth and we’re able to reach more patients and tell folks that we're here. A lot of people don't know that research even happens in the Eastern zone,” says Robinson.
Robinson’s department has been gaining visibility. “Since some of the physicians at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital have learned about our department, we’ve had physicians knock on our doors and say ‘hey, I have this project I’ve always wanted to do.’ And I can say ‘come on in, I know exactly who you need to talk to,’” she says.
“We're very unique in that we can kind of take on anything that comes through that door,” says Robinson. “I'm really happy with where we're at and how far we've come in such a short amount of time.”
To learn more about clinical trials, visit www.novastudiesconnect.ca.
