Measured, in their words.

My consent said fifteen and my application said twelve, and I had read both a dozen times without seeing it. They found it in the first review, fixed the drawing everywhere it appeared, and the resubmission came back approved with nothing else flagged.

My site letter said "happy to support." Nora rewrote it so the site named the records I would actually pull, got it signed on letterhead, and the board never asked a question about access. First submission, approved.

I was certain my project was research. Victoria read the design, showed me it was quality improvement, measured the claim against what I had actually drawn, and the determination came through without a revision. I would have filed the wrong form and waited for nothing.

Halfway through collection I needed a second site. They drew the amendment, matched every document to the new site count, and handled the board's reply. The first site never stopped, and the second started on the right side of the datum. My only regret is not sending them the proposal earlier.

I handed them everything after proposal approval and went back to my unit. Grace drew a consent my participants could actually read, Nora filed it in the portal, and the approval letter arrived without a single revision request. I saw every document before it went in and changed two words in one of them. That was my whole involvement with the IRB.

The free review came back with one line: submit it. No upsell, no list of things I "might want to consider." I filed it myself, the board approved it as exempt, and I have recommended them to three people in my cohort on the strength of the review they did not charge for.

The board sent my application back over one sentence — "data will be kept secure." Grace rewrote the whole plan with a name in every answer: the service, the roles, when the identifiers came off, when it would be destroyed. The revision response went in and the approval followed. I had not understood that the sentence measured nothing until she showed me what measuring looked like.

Three sites, three letters, and each one described my data differently. Nora drafted all three to the same sentence, got each signed with authority, and the application named exactly what the letters named. The board determined expedited and asked for nothing further on access. I would not have seen the mismatch until the return.

I had revised my protocol twice and was about to file the consent from the first version. The free review caught the version stamp, Grace rebuilt the consent to the current protocol with every element in it, and the board approved the file without a question about the consent. Nobody else had read the two documents side by side.

My project ran long enough that the board asked for continuing review while I was still collecting. I had not known it was coming. Nora had — the reply was drawn, filed, and approved, and my collection never paused. Full Handover meant exactly what it said: I kept the study and never once opened the portal.