Back Breaking Work: Implementing a Spine Registry in an Orthopedic Clinic

Abstract

Chris Ryan sighed as he opened an email seeking assistance for yet another technical issue. It was much more than Chris had anticipated when he started the American Spine Registry (ASR) project as a first year medical student 10 months earlier. He had learned a painful lesson through this research experience: implementing a clinical data collection project is anything but simple. Even though Chris had adequate funding and the support of department administration, the project had taken months longer than expected, and each week, it was becoming increasingly more frustrating. At the outset, there were no spoken expectations of technical (computer) expertise or human resource management skills, yet these aspects had consumed more time than any “research” component of the project did. Chris had begun to wonder if he would see this project through to fruition.