Why I Will Never Do Research at the VA

All of the residents have three sources from which to gather data for their research projects - UAMS, ACH, and the VA. Most of us choose to limit our data pool to patients/charts from UAMS and the VA. But one of my bolder colleagues has decided to also gather data from the VA. She is working on the type of project the VA population can provide a large number of data points, so it's reasonable for her to involve them. Question is, is it worth it?

Not uncommonly she presents with yet another frustration related to her project. And pretty much every time it goes back to her involving the VA patients. I have seen the list of forms she has had to fill out just to look at the same charts she looks at every day at work. The amount of redundancy between them is amazing. Taken out, there would really only be a couple forms remaining. She has made more phone calls for a simple retrospective review than one would ever think necessary. To top it off, she has literally had to gain special security clearance to go talk with certain people  (who work in the very same building our clinic is in) behind locked doors about doing this. There is more red tape than I thought 3M capable of making.

What makes the veterans any more privy to privacy protection than the next person? Nothing.