Year One - Paul

Paul is a resident in Neurosurgery and he has begun working on his research project. He met with his mentor to discuss possible questions that their department/clinic would have enough data to sufficiently answer. Paul is interested in traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and his mentor suggested looking at which patient characteristics are good predictors of 3 month outcome defined by the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS). Paul looks at previous research in this area and comes up with a list of patient characteristics and measurements that describe the general population of subjects entering his clinic with a TBI and that may be predictive of 3 month GOS. Once he has formulated his list of variables of interest he needs to determine the feasibility of his study.

Now that Paul has a research topic in mind he needs to determine if there is enough data available. Without IRB approval it is not possible for Paul to gather the data, however the medical center he works at has a Cohort Discovery tool. This tool will allow him to get a rough estimate of the number of patients that entered with a TBI and had an observed 3 month GOS. Once Paul has established the feasibility of his project he begins formulating his proposal to the IRB. It is a good guideline for Paul to have his IRB proposal submitted by the end of his first year of research.

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-- ErinEsp - 07 May 2012