Blog Post Focus–Navigating Institutional Review Boards Is a hassle
The blog post explores Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) at institutions and navigating them as a resident. For certain scholastic activities they are necessary for approval. However, they generally will be difficult to contact and gain such approval. Expect any project to require a lot of paperwork and a lot of time and several revisions.
Finding Who is Responsible
Who Can Connect You to the Institutional Review Board?
The first part of navigating an Institutional Review Board is to find out who is responsible for communication with the IRB. There is someone in your academic institution who should be available for residents. Search your institution’s website, email your program coordinator, and ask fellow residents. Someone will be able to help you find this contact information.
Once you find the contact with the IRB you can reach out to them. Then, they can let you know the next steps.
Paperwork for the Institutional Review Board
A Mountain of Paperwork
Setting up research studies takes a lot of time and effort. Therefore, the Institutional Review Board likely will have more paperwork than you ever will want to fill out. However, you will have to fill out the mountain of paperwork for the IRB. Your institution will have its own procedures distinct from other places, so you have to be patient and go by their rules.
Navigating an Institutional Review Board Is Always A Long Process
You may have physical paperwork, or it may be all online. You likely will have to do online training from some agency going over research requirements. After training you can start filling out the paperwork for the project type you are trying to setup. You may have to get a bunch of signatures from your specialty department and whoever is going to be on the department—and they may have to do the training too. With all the signatures and getting other people to complete the training this can take a long time.
Once you get all the training, signatures, and paperwork completed then you can submit the project to your IRB. The IRB may only meet a few times a year, so try to get it submitted as soon as possible.
Institutional Review Board Decisions
The IRB may approve your project or they may not. If they do not approve the project they should have some feedback on why it was not accepted. Maybe you need to describe the scientific merit, or give more information about the proposed project. Whatever the reason, it should be made clear what needs to be changed to be considered again.
Whatever changes are required, address them. Re-submit for the next IRB meeting. If changes are required again, repeat the process.
Once approved, carry out the project.
Final Thoughts on IRB Navigation
The IRB approval process is long, time-intensive, and frustrating. For many residents it is not worthwhile. It may take a significant portion of residency to approve the project and then another significant portion to get data. Then more time to interpret the data.
For one resident this is a ton of time and effort. If this is a group effort or a longitudinal project that can be continued for years it may be more worthwhile for residents to set up. These sorts of projects may or may not be able to add worthwhile scholarly work to a CV.
Be aware that IRB approval can be a monumental process. Don’t go into it lightly. Be ready for submitting several edited editions of the project prior to approval.
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