by Krystal Bradford, CIP, Research Compliance Specialist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

PRIM&R is pleased to share a post by Krystal Bradford, CIP, a member of the PRIM&R Blog Squad for the 2014 Advancing Ethical Research (AER) Conference. The PRIM&R Blog Squad is composed of PRIM&R members who will blog here, on Ampersand, about the conference to give our readers an inside peek of what happened December 4-7 in Baltimore, MD.

With more than 100 sessions to choose from, there was a plethora of information available at the 2014 AER Conference. However, beyond the sessions, there was also a number of helpful resources and products that attendees could learn about and/or gain access to while in Baltimore.

One of the best features that PRIM&R introduced this year? The AER14 Conference app. Talk about information overload—this app gives users the ability to easily download all of the uploaded slide presentations from the conference! With every PRIM&R conference you can only be in one place at a time, but with the app you are able to view the presentations for sessions that you were unable to attend. Several slides have links to reference websites that you can use in your daily work when you are in need of a new resource. In addition, the app allows you to make notes on the slides to remind yourself of key points made in the presentation. When you return to the office, you can view these notes and email them to yourself, as you work to implement some of the things you learned during the conference.

The AER14 conference also featured exhibitors with products that catered to the research community from IRB management software to central IRBs to resource centers. I personally like to collect information from all of the vendors, and then review the materials in my room at the end of the day. This provided me time to reflect upon their offerings and afforded me an opportunity to then make necessary inquiries of how a company’s resources may be something that would be beneficial to me or my institution.

While in the exhibit hall, I also attended a demonstration of PRIM&R’s Knowledge Center and discovered a wealth of information. In the past, when I’ve had a question, I have searched my go-to resource, the IRB Forum, but I am looking forward to making the Knowledge Center a place that I visit frequently as well. The Knowledge Center, available to PRIM&R members, provides information on current topics and trends related to research ethics and oversight. it is a great place to discover templates being used by other institutions, view past PRIM&R webinars and conference panels, and discover recent news related to the field. I plan to utilize this resource in my day-to-day work life. First and foremost, there will be a bookmark on my internet browser going directly to this page. I also plan to spend a bit of time each month exploring the content to see what is available.

In addition to the Knowledge Center, I also discovered that PRIM&R has a new offering for its members that allows them to earn continuing education credits for reading articles related to the field and completing a short quiz. The Research Ethics Digest Self-Study Program is a free offering for members that is a great way to earn the necessary credits for Certified IRB Professional (CIP®) recertification. I am looking forward to taking advantage of this offering in the future.

The realization that I had so many new resources at my fingertips left me feeling refreshed and recharged. With these tools, I have no doubt that it will be easy to operationalize what I learned at the conference when I return to Cincinnati.