CHCS - Perspectives Summer/Fall 2017

College of Health Care Sciences 15 LAST YEAR , I was teaching the on-campus session of the evidence-based practice class to our transition Doctor of Physical Therapy students. Among them were a few clinicians from the Memorial Rehabilitation Institute. During class, I could see they were excited about the possibility of doing research at Memorial, so I offered my help. It started an unexpectedly long journey to cross barriers between institutions. We met and decided to start with a retrospective study followed by a small-scale clinical trial to get their feet wet. I put together a grant proposal to our HPD research committee and got it approved rather quickly. Our intention was to get a few students to abstract information we needed from the medical record to look at the change in health service after implementation of a program. It seemed simple at the time. We soon realized that even though NSU has a clinical education agreement with Memorial, the agreement does not cover student research activities. It took legal offices from both institutions a few months to get it done. Now, we have an official collaboration agreement with Memorial on research projects involving students and faculty members. Subsequently, we learned there also needs to be a separate scope of work form for the individual project. It took several weeks for this document to be created and signed by both parties. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) is another issue. We got ours approved by NSU’s IRB rather quickly. The IRB at Memorial Health System has different requirements. After creating a REDCap account and having all personnel complete the required CITI module, Memorial’s IRB came back and requested another business associate agreement , because our students will be accessing their electronic medical records while not doing a formal clinical internship. Again, it took a few weeks. The final hurdle was the background check . With Memorial using American Databank, all students need- ed to go through Complio. We were happy to comply with the requirement, until we saw the standard package for clinical rotation (immunization, physical exam, flu shot, among others) was used for student researchers who will never be on the hospital premises. After some negotiation, Memorial is creating a separate package for students who are involved in research only. We hope we have paved the way for future collaboration between NSU and the Memorial system. ● Involves Intricate Process M. Samuel Cheng, Sc.D., M.S., PT, is director of the Ph.D. in Physical Therapy Program and an associate professor of the Physical Therapy—Fort Lauderdale Program.