The Record Outlives Everyone

Part of Research Assistant (ASSIST) Training: Writing It Down So It Can Be Relied On.

About 1 minutes. Free, in your language, no account needed.

Someone will read this in ten years

Trial records are kept for years after the study ends, because a regulator may want to check how a medicine was tested long after everyone involved has moved on.

The person reading your entry will not be able to ask you what you meant. Whatever the record says on its own is what it says.

Write for a stranger

Avoid abbreviations your site invented. Avoid "as discussed" or "as per usual practice" — the reader does not know what was discussed or what is usual.

Say what happened. "Visit rescheduled to 14 March at participant's request, within window" is readable by anyone. "Moved, pt request" leaves three questions.

Legible counts as part of the record

If nobody can read it, it does not function as a record, however accurate it was. This sounds trivial and is one of the most common monitoring findings there is.

If your handwriting is hard to read under time pressure, slow down for the numbers. A misread 1 and 7 changes a result.

Never sign for someone else

Your initials mean you did it or you saw it. Signing on behalf of a colleague who is busy, even with their agreement, breaks the link between the record and the person, and that link is the whole basis of the record's reliability.

If someone asks you to, say no and tell your coordinator. It is a serious thing to be asked, and the person asking may not realize how serious.