Forward Together: Locking in Team Culture

Duke Clinical Research Institute builds a lasting tradition around celebrating milestone moments

combination locks
Locks mounted on a wall honor database locks compiled by teams at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. Photo by Stephen Schramm

Spend any time on the second floor of the Durham Centre, Duke Clinical Research Institute’s downtown home, and you can’t miss the brightly colored wall filled with locks.

Ranging from heavy steel padlocks, to colorful combination locks, and even small plastic toy ones, each lock is mounted on a plaque, representing a clinical research study that has had its database locked. That means a DCRI team has gathered treatment information from a wide network of patients, compiled and double-checked the data and deemed it ready to be analyzed by researchers. Taking anywhere from eight months to several years for a team to pull together, the locking of any clinical trial database is the culmination of a tremendous amount work and collaboration.

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