Institutional Review Boards are an outgrowth of past abuses in the research system and exist in law for the protection of human subjects participating in research protocols. It is incumbent upon conscientious IRBs and their parent institutions to constantly seek to improve the quality of the review process. Continuous Quality Enhancement is essential for the operation of a sophisticated University Institutional Review Board. To that end this research is of paramount importance to the University for the protection of its human subjects, its image in the community, the quality of the research product, and compliance with the regulatory schema which gets ever more burdensome. This proposal attempts to establish the data necessary and the protocols required to implement a continuous quality enhancement plan for the NSU-IRB. This research is of both a qualitative and quantitative nature.
The measurable objectives include: