Nurses have historically been integral to the conduct of industry-sponsored trials on new drugs and devices within the US and abroad.However, the clinical research
nursing workforce supporting pharmaceutical and device development is essentially invisible. Although nurses are evident in the leadership of international clinical research organizations such as the Association for Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP), Society for Clinical Research Associates (SoCRA), Association of Clinical Pharmacology Units (ACPU), and others, nurses are not specifically differentiated or counted in the membership of these organizations, which have a multidisciplinary, sponsor and product-focused orientation, and which are currently the only providers of specialty certification in clinical research management.There is no
reliable way in the nursing professional demographics databases to find nurses who identify themselves as practicing in research (as opposed to conducting research), because that information specifically is not collected in surveys such as the National Sample Survey
of RegisteredNurses or data collected by state boards of nursing.Anecdotal information from nurses practicing in commercial sites suggests that the Food and Drug Administration and its international counterparts, including the World Health Organization,are the primary drivers of standards and that scope of practice is primarily influenced by institutional policy and state regulations of nursing practice, which vary widely.