Duke Clinical Research Institute Reviews

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We are pleased to hear you are enjoying a great work/life balance and the wonderful benefits Duke has to offer. DCRI prides itself on building strong teams with leaders who believe in our mission and support their staff, we are glad to hear this has been your experience. We couldn’t agree more, listening to our employees and hearing their feedback is crucial to our mission and work we do every day to improve the lives of patients around the world by working on cutting-edge research.

Hello, and thank you for sharing your comments. The DCRI, through its affiliation with Duke, has a rigorous process to manage performance for all Duke employees, one that is in line with industry guidelines and best practices. Furthermore, our mission to conduct innovative clinical research and share knowledge to help improve care for patients underpins every discussion and decision we make here at the DCRI. To get to the answers of some of the most pressing clinical care questions, we begin by asking the right questions that help to frame an approach to discovery that unveils truths. Each day, DCRI’s faculty and staff are focused on developing and sharing knowledge through innovative clinical research, and we’re proud of the work we do to improve patients’ lives. Thank you for your contribution to that and for taking time to share your feedback.

Thank you for sharing your input. We agree that as a part of Duke and the School of Medicine, DCRI offers a robust array of benefits, not the least of which is very flexible work options! We’re currently implementing a comprehensive strategic plan that launched last year, which includes new offerings for areas of growth in clinical research, such as pragmatic trials and studies, and digital health solutions. The DCRI is pivoting to meet the needs of our sponsors in this new decade, and we’re excited about our future. We also remain deeply committed to our mission to develop and share knowledge through our clinical research innovation, and to our unique model of uniting the world’s top clinician/physicians with a deep bench of talented operations teams who are dedicated to our ultimate goal—improving patient care.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Understandably, we disagree with your outlook for DCRI’s future, yet we appreciate your passion. As an academic research organization (ARO), we pride ourselves on working in a mission-based institute that is shaped by more than 125 dedicated faculty who develop clinical research based on the chronic diseases they treat each day at our hospital and clinics. The world’s largest commercial pharmaceutical companies and federal health institutes rely on the DCRI as a trusted partner to lead the way—taking the first steps—in how clinical research should be done. We get to work on some of the most forward-thinking and interesting research being conducted today; we have the opportunity to test innovative methods, especially in the areas of real-word evidence and pragmatic approaches. We are especially proud of the work we do on government grants, which is some of the most rewarding work our teams get to lead. It’s in this spirit that we fully understand that an ARO is not for everyone, but it is for those who approach each day with an unwavering belief that we can change patients’ lives, no matter the challenges we face in the day-to-day design and implementation of clinical trials and studies. Finally, we’re not alone. The DCRI is a part of the Duke School of Medicine and Duke’s larger health system. This association provides great benefits and flexibility, as well as a large playing field for finding ways to advance your career. Again thank you for taking time to share your thoughts and we wish you well in your career.

Thank you for sharing your input; we hear your disappointment in your experience here. As the largest ARO in the world, and the only one with significant operational capabilities, the DCRI is unique. With that, we are keenly aware of how important it is to carefully manage our faculty and operations partnerships, recognizing that it’s the unique union of these groups that make the DCRI able to both develop the next generation of clinical research methodologies and find new paths to implement our innovative thought leadership. Sometimes, that makes for a bumpy road. But always, as we have done for the past 30+ years, we work together to deliver on sharing knowledge that changes patient care--our mission. In the past year, the DCRI has developed and is undertaking a new strategic plan, one that will assure that we continue to lead the way in bringing new ideas and methods to clinical research. Our sponsors, both federal and commercial, rely on the DCRI to do this cutting-edge work. Change is often difficult, and we are confident that our vision and strategic plan for new services and new approaches, along with faculty and staff committed to our mission, are what our sponsors, partners, and collaborators are seeking. As part of Duke, DCRI offers a robust array of traditional benefits to our employees such as medical care, dental care, retirement, time away, and flexible work options. In addition, our employees are afforded a host of learning opportunities and a wide variety of family-friendly and cultural benefits, as part of the Duke community. Again, we appreciate your input.

Thank you for your input and for your years of service at the DCRI. We appreciate your contribution in supporting our faculty and operations teams on our studies. We want to acknowledge that earlier this year the DCRI made some staffing changes in your area to consolidate our executive assistant support in order to ensure that our faculty and operations executives have the right administrative support for their needs. We also have re-committed to sharing resources across the DCRI, which means our teams have both the opportunity to grow in new areas and also may have additional responsibilities to manage in order to ensure we are optimizing staff time on our clinical research projects. We’re sorry to hear that you may not have received recognition for your work, as we know first-hand the importance of each and every employee at the DCRI in contributing to our mission, and we strive to ensure they know of our appreciation for their work.

We appreciate your input on Glassdoor. We want to first address your reference to bullying. As you know, Duke University has clear policies that guide our behaviors. The DCRI does not condone any behavior that constitutes bullying. We hope that you contacted your HR representative in any instance where this may have occurred. Second, since posts on Glassdoor remain evergreen, we do want to clarify for our readers who might read this post in the future that there are no additional layoffs planned at the DCRI at this time. In terms of real change occurring at the DCRI, we are actively transforming our services and offerings to ensure that we are distinctive and relevant for our sponsors for the future, and we are ushering in new ways of doing things as a result. These new approaches include initiatives to improve operations at the DCRI, with a strong commitment to create faculty (physician) and operations partnerships in all that we do and to support our senior leaders in improving their management skills. The DCRI has a long history of leading the way in clinical research. Sponsors rely on our innovative, entrepreneurial and collaborative approach to discovering new ways to conduct clinical research. And the industry relies on our mission to share knowledge to help inform research methodologies and new paths to patient care. We are changing things here at the DCRI, with the goal to ensure that we evolve in line with our sponsors’ research plans and needs.