The Science Behind was approached by a Contract Research Organisation (CRO) to find specialist neurology personnel to administer lumbar punctures to obtain corticospinal fluid (CSF) samples and someone who was certified to administer Part 3 of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS).
The client provided us with details of the schedule of tasks required for this study, the planned start dates and the number of volunteers involved.
Following discussions with various colleagues, we were able to ascertain that candidates with both of these requirements and availability in their schedules to accommodate this study were hard to find. However, as a result of recommendations of possible candidates from our network of researchers, we were able to identify a medically trained, neurology research fellow who had considerable experience in administering lumbar punctures and a variety of assessments for movement disorders.