How to be the most popular epidemiologist in your company: Affordable quality approaches to guarantee project director and client satisfaction

Much - some say too much - has been written about Quality. Some has the ring of dogma, “Have faith in Quality!;” or prescription, “Try it. It's good for you!.” Some simply states the obvious, “It is all about client satisfaction! Plan with the end in mind!.” Whatever the justification, the Quality activities usually seem like a Rube Goldberg solution (noun, “a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation, Webster's New Dictionary, 2008). At the same time, project directors (PDs) and clients often end up dissatisfied with the performance of the epidemiologist assigned to their projects. They complain they did not get what they needed; what they did get was too expensive; and it was late. Using examples from current project experience, this presentation identifies practical, unobtrusive, and evidence- based Quality methods for aligning clients' expectations, PD's management functions, and epidemiologists' performance to achieve win-win solutions for the bread-and-butter projects that make up the research contractor's project portfolio. The answers are practical measures that are worthwhile without undue burden on project resources. The key to mutual satisfaction rests on epidemiologists empowering their audiences and creating the basis for satisfaction with the work performed. The goal is to show how quality steps introduced early in the project will provide eventual efficiencies and maximize satisfaction even when nothing goes wrong. Well done, your PDs and clients will not even know they have been part of a Quality process.