The update on my project since the last blog; I found out just a few weeks ago that UNM IRB would not sign my project proposal. This went on from July 31st to the first part of September. I had to escalate to a higher power the need to get this signed or not so that I could move on. The Director of the IRB for the UNM College of Nursing was helping me with this; she was dismissed multiple times no reason given for the “one” signature that I needed. This individual did not sign citing I was not an employee of UNM any longer, and I was not a student with UNM. However, if we would have known this week’s earlier, we could have submitted an agreement with FHSU and UNM, which may have been accepted. I had to switch to a survey which will be going out to NPs in the state of New Mexico. The study developed was done with Survey Monkey (which I just got done); will need to redo the FHSU IRB BEFORE October 7th and submitted by that date to be able to send the Survey later in October. I received assistance from Dr. Keenan and Dr. Manry on how to manage this situation and the new direction we needed to take. It will by no means be as strong of a study. However, it will still yield valuable information on the attitudes, beliefs, and barriers to practice with guidelines from nurse practitioners.
My new proposal: “Assessment of attitudes, beliefs & barriers of New Mexico nurse practitioners on the utilization of the 2016 CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.”
I created a simple time-line (check points) for the new and current proposal. The yellow arrow represents the very start and “yield”. The “green” is a go; the “red” is stop and evaluate. This will be tweeked as I continue over the next few weeks and will most likely change.