The CRISP Program is staffed by pre-health students from neighboring universities and all over the United States. At any given time, there are between 55 and 75 CRISP students in the program.  Between 2004 and 2020, our site has hosted over 1000 pre-health students.  More than 50% of our research assistants between this time period have been accepted into medical, nursing, dental, and physician assistant programs. Several CRISP students have even come back to matriculate in our Emergency Medicine Residency Program.

CRISP students are integral to the research mission of the OHSU Emergency Department.  Since the program's inception, CRISP students have successfully screened, consented, and enrolled thousands of patients into multiple studies of varying complexity, including FDA drug and device trials, and cross-sectional and prospective survey studies. Our CRISP students undergo hours of rigorous fundamental concepts of clinical research, confidentiality, consent and procedural skills, practice informed consent, continuous learning that provides ongoing research education including the CITI modules on Human Subjects Protection, GCPs, and HIPAA. Once trained, the CRISP student will use EPIC (the electronic health record system at OHSU) to proficiently screen all patients who come into the OHSU Emergency Department for each active study protocol.  If a patient is deemed eligible for the study, the CRISP student will inform the patient and/or the patient’s legal guardian (LAR) about the study, and proceed with the informed consent process if the patient is willing to participate.  Once the patient is consented, the CRISP students will move forward with enrollment procedures which can range clinical data abstractions, patient surveys, and/or work with the ED treatment team to collect necessary patient samples and imaging such as ECGs, blood, urine, or stool.