(no subject)

[rivka]

Way back here, in response to the "ask me anything" meme, an anonymous commenter asked me to talk about a typical day at work. It's taken me a while to actually get my act together and keep notes, but Anonymous? Here ya go.

8:30am: Detach clinging child from knees and leave for the light rail stop.
8:45: Arrive at clinic at the exact same time as Mr. A, my first appointment. He's brought his pillbox in for me to review. When I praise him for (a) getting the pills sorted right and (b) taking all of his medicine this week, his pleasure is so puppyish that it's hard to remember he has a substantial prison history. Give a lot of reinforcement for adherence and schedule an appointment for some testing, to try to figure out whether the reason he can't read is due to a learning disability, mental retardation, or just bad education.
9:00: That's funny - my 9am research appointment doesn't seem to be on the master list of study participants. After much hunting, decide that the name on the schedule must be a non-obvious nickname.
9:15: The question proves to be academic, as Mr. B has failed to show up. Get a cup of tea and a doughnut and chat with the nurses.
10:00: The 10am research subject is also late.
10:15 Mr. C walks into the office. He missed his appointment on May 1, can I see him now? Sure. I start to take his information and discover that he's homeless, which would explain why we haven't been able to reach him to reschedule.
10:20: 10am appointment shows up with a chip on her shoulder. Plead with Mr. C to stick around. He agrees. Begin Ms. D's six-month follow-up appointment by reminding her of her rights as a research subject, interviewing her about her health and social situation, and having her fill out some questionnaires.
10:40: Upon opening the box of blood tubes to get them labeled for Ms. D, discover that only two are left in the box. That leaves none for Mr. C, to say nothing of the three subjects scheduled for the afternoon. Call Research Assistant and ask her to bring over another box.
10:50: Notice that the 11am hour is double-booked, which isn't supposed to happen. Mr. C makes it triple-booked. Send Ms. D to the lab with blood tubes. When RA arrives with blood tubes, beg her to stay to see one of the overbookings.
11:00: Accept filled blood tubes from Ms. D. Listen to her complain about the inadequacy of our study payments. Pay her off. Inquire loudly, in waiting room, about the whereabouts of either one of the double-booked 11am appointments. No one answers.
11:05: Mr. C has gone too. Talk with RA about how she's approaching one of her clinical cases, and give well-deserved praise and encouragement.
11:15: Send RA off for lunch. Label the rest of the box of blood tubes.
11:30: Mr. C returns. Interview him. Read the questionnaires out loud to him. Send him to the lab for blood.
12:00: 12pm appointment arrives: Ms. E. Ask her to wait.
12:20: Bring in Ms. E and start explaining the study to her while waiting for Mr. C to return with blood. She is already in what our participants call "the stress study," and is now enrolling in "the medicine study." She has a hard time understanding the difference between them, what she will be doing today, and why she needs to wait before coming back for her follow-up visits in the other study. Explain many times.
12:30: Mr. C knocks on the door. Trade him his hat and his $10 for two tubes of his blood. Interview Ms. E about medication adherence and have her complete three short, possibly-predictive questionnaires. She reminds me that I refused to enroll her in our studies a long time ago when she was still using drugs, prompting an angry and profane response. "See?" she says. "I'm actually a nice person now."
1:00: Leave the clinic, go by the Subway in the main hospital to buy lunch, and run the blood samples up to the lab.
1:30: Lunch in front of my computer, with LJ.
1:55: Dash out of the building and walk a block to the Nursing School.
2:00: Arrive at workshop, "Grants.gov: What every PI needs to know." Listen in increasing horror as Byzantine new system for federal grant applications is unveiled. The best part: the government estimates that 40 person-hours will be required to complete the forms, exclusive of the time needed to develop the scientific content. Take five pages of horrified notes for Lydia (my boss).
3:45: Return to office. Copy notes for Lydia and attach a horrified post-it note.
4:00: Write a memo to one of our funding sources, detailing progress on the study and outlining our plans for presentations and publications over the upcoming year.
4:30: Send some e-mails to Lydia, including the progress memo and notes on my recent clinical activities.
4:35: What do I have time left for? Not much. Read a journal article called "Noncompliance in hospitalized patients with AIDS."
4:45: Leave the office for the bus stop.

Comments

[perceval.livejournal.com]

FORTY PERSON-HOURS???? That's way up there with EU grants, but British Research Council grants are far easier.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

My goodness. That makes my month in Waterloo look positively leisurely.

The forty person-hours to complete the forms sounds about like what we have to do in Canada, too. Stupid academia. *kicks SSHRC*

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Some days I have a lot more time for steady effort. Today, for example, I spent most of the day hip-deep in data analysis. There was much less running to and fro.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. Don't get me started about grants.gov. Or the fact that our institution has decided to create its own only pre-application system in a format that's utterly incompatible with grants.gov and requires roughly the same amount of time to fill out, thus doubling the time a researcher will have to spend doing "easy, on-line applications."

No wonder so many researchers here are taking early retirement ...

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

We just spent a week readying a grant app for grants.gov. It was... interesting. (If it's computer-related, it's my job to make it work.) At least the site didn't die this time, like it did the first time we submitted a grant there.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Office of Research Development guys alluded briefly to "server problems" and so forth at the grants.gov end of things. I thought about what it's likely to be like when they roll over to electronic-only submissions and thousands of researchers are trying to submit R01s simultaneously... and shuddered.

[kyra-ojosverdes.livejournal.com]

(Love your new default usericon!)

We submitted three days early this time (it was due yesterday, we submitted Friday) and their servers behaved. There were a few issues on this end, mostly with um... let's just say "difficulty following written directions" and know that I'm leaving out a lot of snark.

The most helpful thing, IME, is to have Adobe Acrobat so you can turn everything into a PDF file and combine multiple PDF files into one (especially helpful for scanned items). This is also helpful for fudging the line spacing, margins, and font size just enough that it's mostly within their standards for such. (If you submit a .doc they can just check the formatting!)

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

and i thought the fact we were tending towards a national ethics form was scary. 40 man hours is just disturbing....i suggest if you want some light reading on the time it takes to fill in ethics forms eg those bloody things which need to be approved before grants can be written, grab some of paul mcneills papers. i apologise fo rthe lack of capitals, my shift keys appear to have died.