Make cash by signing up clinical testing

By Andy Martingale


I had finished my college studies and was working a summer job as a tourist guide, deciding that I would do that before entering the world of full time employment. Like most new graduates I had a huge amount of student debts that I wanted to clear and I was willing to entertain any legal chance to earn the money to do it.

Some people I knew informed me of the huge amounts of cash they were getting paid by signing up for medical research trials at a local medical research unit. They told me they were getting paid large amounts of money for taking part in this research. It seemed like an opportunity too good to miss out on.

I got the details of the testing centre from my friends and contacted them. I received an application pack with numerous forms to fill in detailing things such as my health and medical history any allergies that I had, next of kin details, etc, etc and the details of my GP plus a consent form to permit them access to my medical history. All of this information is required by the clinical research units because they have to know your medical history to ensure that they are only testing on healthy volunteers who don't have conditions that could be aggravated by the new drugs that they are testing.

After filling in all the requested details, I returned the forms to the address supplied wondering how long it would take until I got a reply. Being the impatient young man that I was, I decided to apply to both of the medical research units that I had found out about just in case I got rejected by one. Eventually I got a letter from them after they had been through my forms and processed all of the information. They asked me to go to the unit for a comprehensive medical check up to make sure I was suitable to be a volunteer.

The tests involved measuring obvious things like height and weight, blood tests for kidney and liver function, measuring resting heart rate and blood pressure. The kind of metrics that they used to make sure I was within the criteria they regarded as being healthy. Even if I wasn't successful with my application, at least I was getting a full health check up, the likes of which would have been very expensive to get done otherwise.

I was rejected by one of the units because my eye pressure was higher than the limits they allowed. The other unit hadn't even tested for this and having passed all of their tests I was accepted as a volunteer to be eligible to take part in their paid medical trials.

After I was told that I had successfully registered as a medical research volunteer I had to wait a while to receive the details of the first trial that they were recruiting for since I had signed up. I received an information pack that included more forms to sign and fill in, details of the drug being researched, side effects that they were expecting, when the trial would take place, when the screening dates where and (most importantly to me, let's be honest about this) the amount of money I would get paid for successfully taking part in the trial.

I went for another medical to be accepted onto the trial but was rejected on the basis of my medical history. I forget which it was now but it was either an allergy that I had listed or a medical condition that they told me made me ineligible. I was very disappointed. I had this happen to me on a number of occasions - being invited to screenings for trials, going for a medical then being rejected on the basis of my medical history. Eventually I complained that they were wasting my time inviting me for these screenings then rejecting me based on something already on my file.

I'm not sure how it happened, whether it was a change in their criteria or something else but I was finally accepted onto my first trial. The first one I did only paid around 600 and involved no overnight stays but it was the first of many that I have done, earning me thousands of pounds over a number of years.

Along the lines (having finally been successful with one medical research unit) I reapplied to the other one. The second time around I didn't have any problems with anything and I was accepted there as a volunteer as well. My persistence and stubbornness had paid off.




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