Consider a site with 18 active studies. Each study has its own IRB approval date, set not by the site's convenience but by whenever the initial approval was granted -- which in turn was determined by whenever the study happened to start. The result is 18 continuing review deadlines scattered across the calendar with no regard for your workload capacity, your PI's availability, or the rhythms of your other regulatory obligations.

At most sites, these deadlines are not scattered evenly. They cluster. A site that opened five new studies during the same quarter three years ago now faces five continuing reviews converging in that same quarter, every year, in perpetuity. And the clustering compounds: the annual continuing review cycle repeats at the same time each year, so a difficult quarter this year will be a difficult quarter next year, and the year after that, unless someone intervenes to redistribute the workload.

That intervention is the subject of this lesson. It is, in my view, some of the most practically valuable work the RC does -- and it is almost never discussed in training programs, because it requires portfolio-level visibility that training programs designed for per-study coordinators simply do not address.

Consider a site with 18 active studies. Each study has its own IRB approval date, set not by the site's convenience but by whenever the initial approval was granted -- which in turn was determined by whenever the study happened to start. The result is 18 continuing review deadlines scattered across the calendar with no regard for your workload capacity, your PI's availability, or the rhythms of your other regulatory obligations.

At most sites, these deadlines are not scattered evenly. They cluster. A site that opened five new studies during the same quarter three years ago now faces five continuing reviews converging in that same quarter, every year, in perpetuity. And the clustering compounds: the annual continuing review cycle repeats at the same time each year, so a difficult quarter this year will be a difficult quarter next year, and the year after that, unless someone intervenes to redistribute the workload.

That intervention is the subject of this lesson. It is, in my view, some of the most practically valuable work the RC does -- and it is almost never discussed in training programs, because it requires portfolio-level visibility that training programs designed for per-study coordinators simply do not address.