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Nov. 14th, 2006 06:58 pmToday, one of my assistants enrolled the 200th participant in our main research study. The 200th since January 20, 2005 - the day before alt.polycon 12 - when I began enrollment. The 200th and last.
It's been a long, long trip. Our initial estimates that we'd finish enrollment in a year turned out to be, well, ten months too optimistic. The study has rigorous entry requirements - we actually had to make them easier, sometime in the first year of enrollment, when we realized that if we really wanted all our participants to have 90 days clean from heroin and cocaine and to have gone six months without being in the hospital overnight, we'd still be trying to recruit when our five years of funding were up. And we ask a lot of our participants. We ask them to come in twelve times in three years. We ask them to get poked with needles. We ask them to save their spit in bottles. And, glory hallelujah, we've finally managed to get 200 of them to agree.
We've still got 36 months to go. In January, the earliest enrollees will begin their 24-month follow-ups. In January 2008, we'll "retire" our first participant. The woman we enrolled today will finish in November of 2009. There's plenty of work left. But today, enrollment is finished.
I have accomplished - with a great deal of help from my friends, of course - a cohort.
It's been a long, long trip. Our initial estimates that we'd finish enrollment in a year turned out to be, well, ten months too optimistic. The study has rigorous entry requirements - we actually had to make them easier, sometime in the first year of enrollment, when we realized that if we really wanted all our participants to have 90 days clean from heroin and cocaine and to have gone six months without being in the hospital overnight, we'd still be trying to recruit when our five years of funding were up. And we ask a lot of our participants. We ask them to come in twelve times in three years. We ask them to get poked with needles. We ask them to save their spit in bottles. And, glory hallelujah, we've finally managed to get 200 of them to agree.
We've still got 36 months to go. In January, the earliest enrollees will begin their 24-month follow-ups. In January 2008, we'll "retire" our first participant. The woman we enrolled today will finish in November of 2009. There's plenty of work left. But today, enrollment is finished.
I have accomplished - with a great deal of help from my friends, of course - a cohort.
