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Chamberlain or the site board returned your application: what that letter actually means, and which desk answers it

A returned application is a request, not a refusal. Before you change a line, establish which of your two boards wrote to you — Chamberlain’s review or your practicum site’s — because the two returns arrive for different reasons, want different things, and are answered on different desks. Then read the letter as a numbered list rather than a verdict, and carry every fix into the other board’s copy of the project before the two files quietly stop agreeing.

Rebecca Lindqvist, DNP, APRN · 2026-08-23

In short

Returned means changes are wanted, not that the project was refused. Identify the board that sent it, number every request, fix the application fields and attached documents together, mirror the change into the other board’s file, and reply on the desk that wrote.

Which board sent it back, and why is that the first question?

A Chamberlain DNP project usually sits before two review bodies that never speak to each other: Chamberlain’s own review, which commonly closes as a written determination, and the practicum site’s, run by a hospital IRB of record or a nursing-research council. Either can hand the file back, and because the envelopes look alike and the effect on your calendar feels identical, the letter gets read as one generic event. That is where the wasted cycle begins.

They are not one event. A return from the school side is almost always about the file as a document: an unanswered item, a form that is not the version the portal now serves, an expired training certificate, a description of procedures that contradicts the attachment describing those same procedures. A return from the site side is more often about the site itself: whose staff you intend to approach, whose charts you intend to open, what becomes of their data afterwards, and which of their people has signed to say the project may proceed on their floor.

So the first move is clerical. Read the letterhead, the sending address and the route the notice arrived by, then write that board’s name at the top of your working page. Everything after it follows.

The two returns, read side by side

Same project, same pages, two very different letters — because each board is protecting something different, and each is answering a question the other one never asked.

A return from Chamberlain’s review

Usually reads as completeness and consistency: a blank field, a superseded form, training that lapsed while the file sat.
Often turns on the improvement framing — whether what you described is practice-change work or something broader. Chamberlain routes DNP projects through a Prescreening Review Form and says most are expected to meet its criteria for a finding that the work is not human subjects research.
Is answered inside the same file, through the route Chamberlain’s IRB page currently names, in the format it serves today.
Which items count as a resubmission and which as a clarification is set by Chamberlain’s current handbook or IRB portal, not by what your cohort filed last term.

A return from the practicum site’s board

Usually turns on people and premises: their staff, their patients, their charts, their network, their name on the findings.
Frequently asks for a signature you do not yet have — a liaison’s support letter, a facility application countersigned, a data-use term written their way.
May classify the project differently than Chamberlain did. A determination on the school side does not settle the question on theirs.
Is answered on their calendar and their agenda, which no school deadline moves.

Neither letter cancels the other board’s decision. If Chamberlain has closed its review and the site then returns the file, the school’s document stands — but a change made to satisfy the site may have to go back to Chamberlain before it is the project of record.

Is a return the same as being turned down?

No, and the federal framework both boards work within draws the line clearly. A board may approve, require modifications in order to secure approval, or disapprove — three outcomes, only the last a refusal (45 CFR 46.109(a)). A board must also notify you in writing, and where it disapproves it must state its reasons and offer you a chance to respond in person or in writing (46.109(d)). A letter listing what it wants changed is the middle outcome, and by far the most common.

There is a further protection worth knowing. Where a board is using the expedited procedure, the reviewers carrying it out may exercise all the authorities of the board except that they may not disapprove — a refusal can only come from the convened board (45 CFR 46.110(b)(2)). In practice, a great many returns are structurally incapable of being the end of the road. They are the mechanism working.

The passes are not unlimited, though. Chamberlain’s IRB Handbook caps re-review of a revised submission by the board or an appointed member at two, after which the matter goes to the full board for a final vote — and material resubmitted without substantive revision may be administratively rejected without further review. The lesson is not to hurry but to make each pass complete.

Two caveats. Whichever letter you hold, nothing may be recruited, consented or collected until both boards have approved in writing. Chamberlain’s Handbook forecloses the obvious workaround by stating that the board will not approve work already completed, so a return is not a soft yes and there is no repairing this in retrospect.

How do you read the letter so that nothing is missed?

Copy every request out of the letter into a working page and number it, including the ones buried mid-paragraph as a subordinate clause. Boards write prose; you need a list. Then sort each numbered item by what will actually close it, because the four kinds below take four different actions and only one of them is a writing task.

Kind of item	How it reads in the letter	What actually closes it
Absent document	“Please provide the signed facility support letter.”	Obtain the signature and attach it in the field provided; where none fits, use the general attachment route and say in the reply where it went.
Contradiction	“The protocol describes two audit points; the information sheet describes three.”	Decide which is true, then correct every page that states it — the application answer, the information sheet, the recruitment text, the instrument.
Protection gap	“Explain how a staff nurse may decline without her manager learning of it.”	Change the procedure itself, then rewrite the application and the participant-facing pages to describe it.
Framing question	“Clarify whether findings are intended for dissemination beyond this facility.”	Answer once, plainly, in the field the board asked in — then check the other board holds that same answer.

Two items hide in most letters. Anything touching design or measures may need your project chair before it is an IRB edit at all; anything mentioning your own unit or your own reports wants a described safeguard, not reassurance.

What does answering one board do to the other board’s file?

This is the failure that costs most and surfaces latest. You satisfy the site’s council by narrowing recruitment to one unit and having a colleague, rather than you, hand out the information sheet. Excellent — and Chamberlain’s file still describes the old recruitment and the old handover, because nobody carried the edit across.

Sooner or later somebody notices, and the honest explanation is that your project of record was never one project. Treat the two files as a single story told twice: every change made for one board gets an immediate decision about whether the other must be told, and where that board has closed its review, telling it is an amendment rather than a quiet edit. Changing an approved Chamberlain project covers which board approves which change.

Practically: keep one master page listing every document, which board holds it, and which version. Update it in the sitting where you make the edit.

What should you avoid while the file is out?

Do not open a second, cleaner application because the first feels compromised. The board tracks one file; a duplicate becomes its own problem.
Do not answer only in the cover reply. Boards approve the fields and the attachments, not your explanation of them.
Do not leave the superseded version attached beside the new one, or the board has to ask which it is reading.
Do not improve things silently. Flag any change the board did not request, or a reviewer meets a difference and must raise it.
Do not begin anything — not a recruitment email, not a chart pull — while either approval is outstanding.

Where does an independent desk fit?

A return is the first occasion on which a board sets out its requirements on paper, which makes it the most useful document you will receive and among the easiest to answer badly. We read the letter with you, establish which board it came from and what each item really asks, build the numbered reply, rewrite every page it touches so both files agree again, and carry the correspondence until the approvals are in writing. How it works sets out the whole route, and the FAQ covers the questions that reach the desk most weeks.

What to do next

Forward the letter, whichever board wrote it, along with the file as you submitted it. We will tell you at no cost which items are single-line corrections, which ones change the project, and which ones oblige you to touch the other board’s file as well — before you answer anything. Request the free application review. If you would rather work forward from the letter yourself, answering revision requests point by point is the template, and the application checklist is the page-by-page list that heads off most returns before either board reads a word.

Sources

Chamberlain University IRB Handbook — the cap on re-reviews, administrative rejection without substantive revision, and no approval of completed work: chamberlain.edu — IRB Handbook (PDF)
Chamberlain University, DNP Project & Practicum Handbook — the Prescreening Review Form route, and both approvals required before implementation: chamberlain.edu — DNP Project & Practicum Handbook (PDF)
Chamberlain University, Institutional Review Board — current committee, forms and submission route: chamberlain.edu — Institutional Review Board
45 CFR 46.109 — the three decisions open to a board, and its duty to write to you with reasons: ecfr.gov — section 46.109
45 CFR 46.110 — the expedited procedure, and the bar on refusing a project through it: ecfr.gov — section 46.110