A revision response is not correspondence. It is a closing instrument, built so a reviewer can take each request in turn, see the change, find the page it now lives on, and tick it. Restate the request in the board’s own words, state what changed, name the document and the location — three lines per item, in the board’s order, never yours. And because a Chamberlain DNP project answers to two review bodies, the last check before it goes out is always the same: does the other board’s file still say this too?
Answer in the board’s order, one entry per request: quote it, say what you changed, name the document and where. Change the application fields as well as the attachments. Then check the other board’s file for the same fact before you submit.
Under the framework both of your boards work within, a review body may approve a project, require modifications in order to secure approval, or refuse it (45 CFR 46.109(a)). Nearly every letter you will receive is the middle one. That matters for how you write, because the middle outcome is conditional: approval is being held open, waiting for something specific. Your response is the evidence that the something has arrived.
A reviewer returning to your file is not rereading the project. They are holding their own letter and looking for each item in it. If your response is a narrative paragraph explaining your reasoning, they have to reconstruct the mapping themselves, and every item they cannot immediately locate is a candidate for a second request. If your response is a list in their sequence, they close items as they read. The difference between one further pass and three is very often nothing but layout.
On the Chamberlain side there is a published reason to make each pass count. Its IRB Handbook states that a revised submission is re-reviewed by the board or an appointed member a maximum of two times; beyond that the matter goes to the full board for a final vote. The Handbook is blunter still about thin resubmissions — material sent back without substantive revision may be administratively rejected without further review. Neither rule punishes a hard question honestly answered. Both punish a pass that leaves items open.
Establish this before you write a word. Chamberlain’s review and your practicum site’s board — a hospital IRB of record or a nursing-research council — keep separate files, separate reference numbers and separate correspondence trails. A response is filed where the request originated: Chamberlain’s through Chamberlain’s current portal in the format that portal serves today, the site’s through whatever route its office named when it wrote.
Sending a well-built response to the wrong desk does more harm than sending nothing. It puts an unrequested document into a file that was not waiting for one, it can read as an attempt to use one board’s work as leverage with the other, and it leaves the board that actually asked still waiting. If both boards have written to you, you write two responses. They may share sentences; they are not one document.
Three lines, in this order, for every numbered request. The discipline is that the third line is a location, not a promise — a reviewer should never have to search.
| Line | What it contains | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| The request | The board’s wording, quoted, with its own numbering preserved. | “Item 4: Clarify how participation is voluntary given the applicant’s role on the unit.” |
| The change | What you did — an action in the past tense, not an intention. | Recruitment now runs through the unit educator, who distributes and collects the information sheet; the applicant is not present. |
| The location | Document, version and section, so the reviewer opens it once. | Protocol v3, section 6.2; Information Sheet v3, paragraph 2; application field on recruitment procedure, revised. |
Where you have made a change the board did not ask for, give it an entry of its own at the end, marked as unrequested, with the same three lines. Unflagged edits are the most reliable way to generate a request you never received.
Two mechanical rules sit underneath all of this. First, change the application fields, not only the attachments: boards approve what the file says, and an information sheet that has moved ahead of the field describing it is an inconsistency waiting to be found. Second, replace superseded versions rather than adding beside them, and carry a version marker on every participant-facing page so the reviewer can see at a glance which one is current.
Every revision made for one board is a fact about your project, and your project exists in two files. Run these four before the response leaves your hands.
Neither board is told about the other’s letter as a matter of course. Whatever the two files are supposed to have in common, you are the only person keeping them aligned.
Say so once, in the entry for that item, and offer something in its place. Before approval is open to it, a board has to satisfy itself on a defined list of findings set out at 45 CFR 46.111 — among them that risk has been minimised, that the choice of participants is equitable, and that additional safeguards exist wherever those taking part may be open to coercion or undue influence. A request is usually the board’s chosen route to one of those findings rather than an end in itself. If that route is impossible in your setting, propose a different one to the same finding and show why it arrives.
What does not work is restating your original position in the words the board has already read, or answering a protection question with reassurance about your intentions. The board is not doubting your character; it is asking what structurally prevents a bad outcome. Answer with a mechanism.
If a request touches design or measures rather than protections, take it to your project chair before you treat it as a form edit — some changes have to be settled academically before they are settled with a board. And nothing may be recruited, consented or collected while either board’s approval is outstanding.
Revision responses are most of what crosses this desk, because they are the point where a project either closes out or starts circling. We take the letter, build the entry for every item, rewrite each document it touches, reconcile the two boards’ files so they tell one story, file on the desk that wrote to you, and handle whatever comes back after that. You keep the project, the data and the findings; each board’s decision stays entirely its own. How it works lays out the route, and the FAQ covers what people ask first.
Send the request letter and the file it refers to. We read both at no cost and come back with the entries drafted for the items that are straightforward, plus a plain note on which ones change the project and therefore oblige you to touch the other board’s copy. Request the free application review. Related reading: what a returned application means on each board, and what both boards look for in a consent or information sheet.
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