It has become common for nurses to be recruited into and/or seek careers outside of the traditional domain of hospital-based work. This article draws on interview data to consider a position nurses are occupying within biomedicine, that of the nurse clinical trial coordinator. It examines and analyzes the value attributed to such positions by nurse trial coordinators. The analysis reveals that nurses identify three aspects of the position-social relations, the acquisition of skills and knowledge, and work and control-as having both advantages and disadvantages over other work roles within nursing. It concludes with suggestions for further research on the role and involvement of nurses in clinical research.

This paper considers an area of clinical research that has been delegated by physician-researchers to nurses and others in the United States, that of clinical trials co-ordination. It uses interviews with nurse trial co-ordinators to explore the occupational processes by which the boundaries of work enactment and the definition of work have been established by nurses and others. It then discusses the occupational processes that have been established to formalize a role for nurses in clinical research. It raises the question of (and offers speculation on) whether specialization alone will distinguish nursing from other occupational groups engaged in clinical research work.

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An ethnographic field study about the informed consent process in investigational drug trials for seriously ill persons with hepatitis C suggests that nurses and physicians referred to these trials as giving treatment, even though they involved placebos. Interview data and informed consent documents contained frequent references to the term ;treatment trial' or ;treatment'. Although these findings were unexpected and not the original focus of our study, we consider them in the light of an extensive literature on the ;therapeutic misconception' that has been described among physicians and patients with AIDS and other serious illnesses. We also suggest that certain organizational and professional characteristics of nursing and medicine reinforce this tendency to refer to the trials as treatment. Implications for further research are provided.