A survey on French hospital physicians' certification to the Good Clinical Practices

National audienceGood clinical practice (GCP) is an international ethical and scientific quality standard for the design, conduct, performance, monitoring, auditing, recording, analyses and reporting of clinical trials. Before the start of a clinical trial, investigators commit to perform the research in accordance with GCPs, regulatory dispositions and protocol. The sponsors are responsible for investigators’ selection and for controlling their skills. Whereas industrial sponsors systematically require a certificate of GCP training, academic sponsors seem to be less demanding. We have carried out two surveys between April and June 2018. A first questionnaire was sent to the 40 French academic directions of clinical research and innovation in order to determine their requirements about the GCP training of the investigators participating in their trials. The second questionnaire was transmitted to physicians of the “Bretagne recherche clinique hospitalière network”: Rennes, Saint Malo, Saint Brieuc, Vannes, Lorient and Pontivy hospitals, in order to determine the GCP certification rate, and their needs in terms of clinical research training. Twenty-eight (70%) directions of clinical research answered the first survey, among which 18 (64%) required systematically the investigators’ GCP certification in case of category 1 interventional studies. This rate decreased for category 2 (50%) and non-interventional category 3 (18%) studies. A total of 345 physicians answered the second survey, among which 263 (76%) had already been clinical trial investigators. However, only 29% of allphysicians and 54% of those who had been principal investigator were certified for GCP training. These results support the need for large campaigns of GCP training in public hospitals