The MakBRC internal monitoring unit was established to provide monitoring oversight for all studies conducted at the research Centre and beyond more so those that do not have regular monitoring by the sponsor or study-specific monitors.
The purpose of the monitoring unit is to ensure that all laboratories under MakBRC and projects/studies they offer oversight to follow protocols, SOPs, GCP and all relevant polices so that the rights, safety and wellbeing of trail participants in the various studies are protected and respected.
Services
· Project monitoring
· Writing monitoring plans
· Assistance with IRB applications
· Drafting study documents e.g. SOPs for the consenting process
· Language translation and transcription (English and Luganda) as well as reviewing translated documents before submission to IRBs.
· Development and quality control of all essential study documents
· Training in research regulatory compliance and good documentation
The Internal monitoring unit plays a vital role in maintaining customer quality and satisfaction by working closely with principal investigators (PIs) and study coordinators. The internal monitors help improve customer experience and satisfaction by aggressively collecting feedback from PIs and study teams. Furthermore, we assess customer satisfaction feedback via various channels like surveys, and extensive assessments, identifying areas for improvement and improving the overall quality of research endeavours. This proactive approach promotes not only transparency and accountability, but also a culture of ongoing improvement within the organisation.
Achievements
With the purpose of improving customer service satisfaction, a physical engagement with PIs was held to solicit their opinions on how best they wanted to be served and some of the highlights from the engagement included: working on our time of response to issues raised, lacking a customer service desk to forward to their claims, conducting customer satisfaction surveys to get feedback the follow the feedback to see results. Lastly a proposal to arrange future physical engagements with them to discuss further organizational improvement.
In another attempt to improve service delivery, satisfaction and following feedback, a survey was prepared by the unit with extensive consultation for the period of 2022-2023 and sent out to principal investigators. It was sent across 46 studies at the research centre where the response rate was 41%.
Overall, 74% of the clients were satisfied with the services they received at MakBRC and 91% commended the good level of receptiveness MakBRC to the clients and their feedback. The clients however indicated the need to accelerate efforts in improving providing “real-time” feedback, laboratory results turnaround times, legal agreements processing time, disbursement of funds and the management of the long procurement processes. There remains a continuous need to invest in the implementation of initiatives that improve those highlighted areas to enhance customer service satisfaction.
Conclusively the collected informative insights helped reshape the base of our relationship with the PIs and the project teams.
Secondly we were able to determine our areas of improvement because we understood how well our services were performing.
Lastly we gained valuable feedback in real time that has been helpful in continuous improvement of our services to our clients.
Slogan:
Guiding Research to build trust and insight
The internal monitoring team
