GCP exam

Two weeks ago, i attended a workshop namely Good Clinical Practice at Hilton's Hotel, Kuching for 3 days. At the end of the 3 days lectures, all participants including me have to sit for an one hour test which the passing grade is about 80-90%. Only when we pass then we are eligible to get the certificate.

What is so important about this certificate that all clinicians, nurses, medical technicians, pharmacists and researchers are encouraged to have one. Especially in recent years, the trend of doing research has begun in ministry of health in Malaysia, so people show interest of doing clinical trials and research. This 3 days workshop probably can tell why, what and how clinical research is conducted under global and Malaysia ethic regulation.

Compared to basic science research which doesn't deal with human property, clinical research will be more complex when dealing with the regulatory requirements. Some countries like China will take about 3-6 years just to convince the ethic committee to approve for their clinical study. As you can see, any party in a clinical research, regardless of the investigator himself, sponsors (usually those pharmaceutical companies who seek for the clinical site to conduct clinical trials) and regulatory board all have their own roles, they must always remember and to make sure the patient's right is protected.

It sounds pathetic if we want to swallow the whole bucks of regulatory requirement before to conduct the clinical research. Through this GCP workshop, we're given brief ideas of the regulation requirement for the clinical research, as well as some exercises. It was quite fun when doing the exercises with the rest of group members (we were assigned to different group since day 1), and can know who had been concentrate during lecture and who hasn't.

I think some people didn't realize that will be an exam after the workshop, so some looked panic. The exam took 1 hour and got 40 questions. I personally thought the questions were ok, except for some pharases that quite confusing. Luckily i done an online GCP mini test last year, so i found some questions were quite similar.

Last night i was informed by my boss that.... Yea, i pass. LOL, so i got another certificate in my closet again (the last certificate i got was the hall of frame to reach the Mt. Kinabalu peak).

=)