Assessing Soft Skills for the Role of Principal Investigator in Clinical Research

Gonzalo Portacio, Clincal Development Services Expert at Actalent

Learn how to assess soft skills for the role of principal investigator in clinical research by using behavioral interview techniques.

Soft Skills Lead to Better Clinical Outcomes

When hiring study physicians or principal investigators (PIs) for clinical trials, the success of your project may hinge on a single, crucial element — the candidate’s soft skills.

Studies have found that clinicians who showcase strong soft skills such as empathy have better patient outcomes, improved patient compliance, higher patient satisfaction and fewer malpractice claims.

However, not every practitioner prioritizes soft skills at the same level as technical expertise. That means your clinician candidates may have less developed soft skills or have a more difficult time demonstrating them in an interview. This disparity is especially evident when looking for candidates with niche clinical expertise. With fewer candidates possessing the needed technical knowledge, hiring managers are left with limited choices and tough trade-offs between hard and soft skills.

Despite the imbalance, don’t automatically overlook soft skills in favor of technical skill sets when hiring for the role of principal investigator in clinical research. Soft skills and emotional intelligence dictate how a candidate will connect with patients, communicate across teams and maintain regulatory compliance — all which impact trial efficiency and outcomes.

In-Demand Soft Skills for PIs and Clinicians

Important soft skills in healthcare, including for PIs, fall into two broad categories — operational and relational. To guide the technical and operational components of a clinical trial, a PI needs to be adept at time management, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Even higher priority, however, are the traits that indicate how well a PI will relate to both patients and your team. This is where communication, adaptability, empathy and interpersonal skills become crucial to drive patient-centered care and achieve better clinical outcomes.

Communication

Good communication at every level can improve patient recruitment in clinical trials and keep other members of the care and clinical trial team aligned with project goals.

From the patient perspective, a PI must quickly and clearly distill complex medical information into understandable language, from explaining a procedure to obtaining informed consent. This helps build trust and supports patients in making informed medical decisions.

For effective team communication, a PI needs to be able to swiftly clarify critical changes to the program and clearly articulate protocol to new team members. Clarity and transparency reduce confusion and strengthen team cohesion.

Clear, streamlined communication across team members also ensures a firm understanding of, and compliance with, the study protocol and standard operating procedures including other regulatory requirements, such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and data privacy.

Adaptability

Exceptional adaptability skills when a PI onboards at the start of a project saves time and budget while setting the clinical trial up for success from the start.

A new PI hire will be faced with an unfamiliar facility, team members and study parameters. However, an adaptable PI will be able to quickly acclimate into the new environment, orient themselves with the clinical trial team and understand the work.

Empathy and Interpersonal Skills

A good bedside manner built on empathy can sometimes be as effective as medicine. An empathetic PI fosters patient trust, which can improve participation, retention and compliance in clinical trials. One study found that a positive patient-clinician relationship had comparable healthcare outcomes to some medical treatments.

Beyond patient relationships, strong empathetic traits can also improve team dynamics. In their leadership role, a PI is in a position to leverage their interpersonal skills to foster more open dialogue among team members and help create an all-around supportive, engaged work environment.

Communication, adaptability, empathy and interpersonal skills are all interlinked when it comes to patient care. A PI will likely need to adapt how they communicate and engage empathetically with each individual based on the patient’s understanding, comfort level and personality.

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The Key to Assessing Soft Skills in an Interview

Assessing hard skills is typically straightforward. A candidate has the experience, credentials and qualifications you’re looking for — or not. Soft skills are more subjective and harder to judge, though just as important. Without effective tools to assess emotional intelligence during the interview stage, you run the risk of hiring a candidate who isn’t a good fit, wasting time and budget.

Putting proper assessment strategies in place during the recruitment process can help you evaluate soft skills before a PI has started a position. Two ways to judge a candidate’s soft skills are through role-playing and by consulting peer and patient reviews of the physician.

Soft Skill Role-play

Role-playing delivers a powerful way to observe a candidate’s thought process and problem-solving skills in real time while assessing their empathy and communication skills. This behavioral interview technique gives you the opportunity to more accurately see how they’ll interact with both patients and other members of the team.

Just as you prepare interview questions, prepare a few scenarios for the candidate to act out with your recruiter or selection and hiring team. Here are a few examples:

Addressing a patient’s concerns about potential side effects can reveal a PI’s soft skills like active listening, empathy, communication, problem-solving and trust-building.
Explaining a protocol deviation to the team can show a PI’s ability to communicate with transparency and adapt as well as lead and collaborate in a group.

Soft Skill Patterns in Physician Reviews

When available, peer and patient reviews of the PI candidate can also give insight into their bedside manner and past performance with patients or in other clinical trial settings. Ask candidates to provide observational assessments, peer reviews or 360-degree feedback reports. And look for public-facing patient feedback from their previous places of employment, as well as consumer review websites such as Healthgrades, Zocdoc or Google Reviews.

While not all reviews are reliable, you may be able to spot patterns and recurring themes that point to a high or low emotional intelligence factor.

Prioritize Soft Skills in Principal Investigator Job Descriptions

To attract the right candidates, include relevant soft skills as requirements in the principal investigator job description. And don’t downplay them — these attributes should be highlighted with as much prominence as required hard skills. Emphasizing the importance of these skills signals to candidates that you value patient engagement and recognize their impact on clinical trial outcomes. It also increases the likelihood of drawing candidates who not only possess these traits but actively prioritize them.

Find PI Candidates with the Right Balance of Skills

Collaborating with a partner like Actalent can support your entire hiring process, from recruitment through onboarding, to help you find PIs with the right balance of hard and soft skills. Our Clinical Development Services team can also support the full life cycle of your clinical trial, drawing on our extensive experience to deliver fully outsourced support and proven PIs and staff to complete quality and compliant work.

With nearly 200 field offices around the world, Actalent has access to an in-person and remote network of talent with the most niche specialty skill sets required for your clinical trial. Additionally, the team’s deep expertise in the highly regulated healthcare and clinical trial environments allows them to assess a candidate’s complex technical abilities and applicable soft skills at a level that may be difficult for an internal hiring manager.

Our team has experience working directly with clinical sites and pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to customize the candidate selection process to meet the needs of any type of facility and organization. In fact, our thorough candidate screening approach can be tailored to evaluate soft skills by working through role-play scenarios and analyzing physician reviews. This ensures you’re getting the right-fit talent that aligns to your project and resonates with patients and team culture.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are soft skills assessed when hiring clinical trial staff?

Soft skills can be evaluated in clinical trial staff, including principal investigators, through the use of behavioral interview techniques such as role-playing. Interviewers and recruiters can also look to peer and patient review sources to identify patterns that indicate consistent soft skill behaviors.

What are soft skills in healthcare?

Essential soft skills for the healthcare field include empathy, emotional intelligence, communication, adaptability and interpersonal skills.

Are behavioral interview techniques effective in assessing soft skills?

Yes, behavioral interview techniques such as role-playing can be effective in reviewing soft skills. In the clinical trial space, role-playing can include common scenarios with patients, as well as with other team members.