Kelly Finno

During my role as a Site Management Associate, I remotely managed about 50 clinical sites to ensure adherence to a Phase IIIB clinical trial, investigating the cardiovascular outcomes by way of recording MACE (major adverse cardiac events). I was responsible to ensure that safety events were being reported properly, patient visits were occurring as per the protocol, medication compliance, including confirmation that the sites had enough medication for their upcoming patient visits. I also was in regular contact with the study coordinator or study physician. Beyond the clinical site management aspect, I became familiar with submitting protocol deviations directly with the sites' IRBs (Institutional Review Boards). I was expected to generate a report following each remote clinical visit to capture the important factors mentioned above. I was also expected to trigger sites for on-site visits by CRAs (Clinical Research Associates) due to high-risk activities.

About 7 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a classmate and I collaborated to assemble "goodie bags" for the laboratory technicians at Doylestown Health in Doylestown, PA. The goodie bags included water, tea, Emergen-C, applesauce, mandarin oranges, nut snack-pack and a handwritten thank you note. The purpose was to give the laboratory technicians a little boost, with healthy and immune-supportive snacks, and to let them know that their hard work is appreciated especially during this time.

A requirement of the Independent Study course I completed was to select a protein and investigate disease(s) caused by truncated or missing protein. I selected protocadherin-15. Throughout the semester, I went through multiple organ systems to consider histology, genetics, and physiology. In addition, diseases were incorporated as applicable. Resources used to complete these requirements: lectures from Histology II, Histology atlases from Histology II, Physiology textbook, Genetics textbooks, Cell biology textbook, The Human Protein Atlas website, Protein Bank website, Virtual Molecular Model Kit website, Molecular Machinery website.