A few things to keep in mind, if you are facing any imminent IRB approval deadlines:
There will be no IRB meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 29, or Tuesday, Jan. 31, as those are both fifth Tuesdays, and the board meets only on the first four Tuesdays of each month.
As of now, our meeting for Tuesday, Dec. 27 is still on. However, previous experience has shown it can be tough to find enough reviewers available on that Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s to meet our quorum requirements, and no quorum means no meeting. Remember, our reviewers are all volunteers and they, like the rest of us, have many other things going on in their lives during the holiday season. So the meeting is on for now, but that is subject to change.
And we still recoil a little inside when we remember that winter we had to cancel meetings two weeks in a row due to inclement weather. While the mild fall so far probably hasn’t gotten us thinking about snowstorms and the like, they do happen, and the UAMS IRB office closes when UAMS implements its inclement weather policy. And when the IRB office closes on a meeting Tuesday, there’s no IRB meeting that day.
All this to say — please keep these things in mind when planning IRB submissions, and if you’re facing a hard and fast approval deadline, give yourself plenty of time to get something submitted, reviewed, and approved.