I Hear Good Things

[smiling4areason]

Several guys have told me, hands down, this is their favorite clinic, it's clean, quiet, good staff and respectful volunteers, laid out well, just all around a great place to pass the time. I'm hoping to do a study there before long, just waiting for one that's worth the trip $$$. 

Anyone who's been there have any advice? Where to stay, best transportation (I don't drive), things to do in the "between times"?

[vark]

Oct 20, 2013 19:27:22 GMT -5 smiling4areason said:

Several guys have told me, hands down, this is their favorite clinic, it's clean, quiet, good staff and respectful volunteers, laid out well, just all around a great place to pass the time. I'm hoping to do a study there before long, just waiting for one that's worth the trip $$$. 

Anyone who's been there have any advice? Where to stay, best transportation (I don't drive), things to do in the "between times"?

clean, yes. mostly. at the old place, in the screening room shower, there was this one dead water bug, that was there for a couple years, i would always check when i came to screen. the new place -looks-cleaner, but it's the same people, the same attitudes.
quiet, no. there's no where to go for peace and quiet.
the new place was built as a carbon copy of covance madison. it's kind of out in the country so less urban element. some rednecks, not as many hip students as in madison. some of the staff are great, like kevin. i like the new lady doctor.
the food is good and you don't have to eat it all. the place has lots of studies and big money. get there by greyhound or trailways. to be ued, i have to dose.

not much to do in town, there's penny lane coffee house on 2d street,, a casino, a shelter, one gay bar, a riverside park. scenic kentucky is a mile away, there's the audobon park.

covance is lurking evil. they banned me for asking them to folow their own rules. they don't understand informed consent. the irb is in their pocket. they threatened paul with a lawsuit. the upper levels of management don't give a damn. the lower levels of management won't even give you their real names, they don't want to be held accountable. when the new building ed, you couldn't go to the bathroom without going to the desk and asking to be let in. eventually they realized that as stupid, but it's a good example of how they don't care about subjects. so, go there, enjoy, but watch your back.

[mike]

I did one study at covance evansville about 3 years ago, it went fine, it was one of those where you're in the clinic about a week, then out about a week, repeat; it went on for around 2 months and payed somewhere over $7000. it was fine, the facility was fine, most of the subjects were fine, all the staff was fine except for one older tech/nurse woman who was mildly cunty.

If anyone is into weird old buildings like I am, I found a cool old abandoned tower that used to be a hotel in nearby Kentucky, it's a strange sight. Unfortunately the Evansville shoe tree is gone now from what I gather, but I was able to see it in all it's glory before it's demise.
Penny lane is nice coffee shop. And yeah I saw the gay bar near the city center, that must be rough being gay in a place like Evansville, even most of the teenagers are like devout church going people around there, it's real culture shock for someone who grew up in CA.

There is a great soup kitchen and homeless shelter near there if you are really down on your luck while waiting for a study. I had to turn to the homeless shelter because it was December and January when I was there and I was about to freeze to death living in my van in 0 degree weather.

And yes Covance has some **** going on sometimes, I experienced some of their CorporateThink/coverYourAss knee-jerk reactionary/weird-*** internal politics during a study I did in their Dallas location one time. I can go into detail about it later if anyone wants to hear about it.

[idoitforthepong]

Sure lets here It!...even though you may just spoil my rosy view of Covance...Madison anyway

[diamond]

I feel like Covance is Top Dog in employee retention. That says soing.

Happy Employees= Happy Volunteers

[Scar Tissue]

I definitely have to check this place out.

[travelingrat]

i had my most horrible clinical trial experience ever at covance daytona beach several years ago. in general i think the measure of a clinic should be how they treat someone who gets bad side effects: do they care? do they take care of that human or jsut boot him or her out? do they still pay full compensation? but especially, how do they treat volunteers who get sick. i would not do another trial for 6 months after that happened to me and had nightmares for a full year, not every night, but every week. it was a really, really bad experience.

HOWEVER: i have good friends in FL who go to covance DB fruequently and have never had a bad experience ... BUT they have never had bad side effects either ... jsut saying, soing to think about, pay attention to what other rats say about how clinics treated them when they had bad side effects.

someone on the forum (sorry do not remember who) recently said, "Be wary," and that is very good advice ... also what Vark said, "Watch your back." It is a mistake for rats to let their guards down. i keep my own logs now so that if soing bad happens, i am prepared.... and it is a detailed log too. I'm not paranoid, jsut want to be prepared IF soing ever happens again!

[mike]

Oct 28, 2013 20:23:26 GMT -5 idoitforthepong said:

Sure lets here It!...even though you may just spoil my rosy view of Covance...Madison anyway

It was not a real big deal, just more really, really irritating to me.
I was in a study where we were in clinic for soing like a week or so.
In our cohort, there was a group of 4 guys who were a little more active and athletic. None of them were assholes at all, they were just the kind of guys who were not into sitting around chilling for 16 hours a day for a week. A few times they ****ed with each other and pulled harmless pranks, but what they spent a lot of time doing was playing catch. One of the guys took a partial toilet paper roll, wrapped it in some tape, and basically made a mini football.

They would throw the "football" around to each other quite a bit. The football was so soft that it really could not cause any injury.

Once, ONE TIME, I made the mistake of picking up the football when it fell near my feet and I threw it back to them. A couple days into the study, the coordinator (tall fairly young guy with a beard) and two other female staff involved with the study pulled me, the four guys, and one or two other guys into another room and gave us this crazy, over-the-top dressing down for our behavior. They had confiscated the football, the coordinator held it in his hand and in an outraged tone, kept calling it a "missile", and kept insinuating how dangerous our behavior was. He kept referring to us being witnessed on the common area cameras, implying that someone was actually manning the cameras most if not all the time; which seemed likely to me as they had apparently caught my single, heinous transgression.

This ended up happening two more times, and yes, they would bring me in every time as well even though I did not hang out or participate with the guys horsing around at all. The staff would get more hysterical and their threats would get more intense every time. By the third time they told us if anyone threw anything else, they would be kicked from the study and banned for life.

Nothing the guys did was dangerous or even diuptive, they didn't do anything where it would bother anyone else watching TV or whatever, they were just expending a little energy.

The behavior from the staff is the kind of thing you see in corporations or big companies sometimes, where the place is run using subtle or perhaps not so subtle threats and intimidation. Where everyone walks around with their assholes puckered up tight enough to turn a lump of coal into a diamond, because they are in constant fear of receiving some kind of negative performance review and ultimately being called into some assholes' office and getting ****-canned. It's like a somewhat milder version of the Stalin regime, the only reason they don't take people out and shoot them as an example or in the act of "purging" is because killing people happens to be illegal in this country currently. I exaggerate slightly, but my point is, it's the same kind of mindset, and it creeps me out intensely; people who are so mind-****ed that they can't even think rationally anymore, with perspective. Everything is an overreaction because it serves to cover their ***; if they freak out and go overboard then they can't be accused of not "doing soing".

And the things I have heard from others supports my belief that this an attitude that permeates the entire company, soing that comes down from upper management. Many on this board remember the bullshit overzealous legal threats that Covance made to this site and Paul, the moderator/webmaster/inventor. For many months people were afraid to even say, "Covance" here.

It's complete horseshit, it reminds me of Scientology, and I have no patience for it. There are many disadvantages and difficulties to being halfway dropped out of society as I am, but one of the perks is I don't have to deal with an atmosphere like this day in and day out, and I do not like having to be in it, not even for a week.

[diamond]

Dang yo!

Covance in Madison ain't like that. The staff are cool and genuinely friendly and they remember things about you from check in to check in... personal things... like friends do. They seem to really give a ****.

And I agree with those that say sucks... cause they straight up treat you like an inmate!

[labrat1]

I can't stand people who constantly curse or create a degraded social atmosphere in the clinic. Like , stay in the ghetto. I would appreciate a research site that has staff that would reprimand the volunteers whenever they curse.

[mike]

Yeah **** those people.

[diamond]

I agree. I don't want to be around pompous, immature, diespectful punks.

Any time anyone breaks house rules, I want staff to interfere. For example, I LIKE when they actually go room to room at 11pm and MAKE SURE people have their tvs off and are not talking on their phones. Go to sleep people! They wake you early on study!

[mike]

Yeah I hate loud and inconsiderate study participants too, but the Dallas Covance incident that I talked about above was entirely staff generated, it was a large study with many participants (like 40-50), and there were no complaints from participants.

[honestlabrat]

This facility is much nicer than madisons, it's a newer and much larger building. The rooms are HUGE, tons of space even with 4 people about 30 ent larger than the rooms at madison. The space is nice and if you like to walk, well there's ALOT of hallway to walk. The tv room has a ton of windows where you get natural sunlight which is nice and the cafeteria is large and located in the middle of the building. The staff and people are fine but the food sucks (their pizza is a joke and dont even talk about the fish) but whatever, I dont expect spaulding quality food anywhere. My main compliant is that they need a freaking drinnking water machine. The water you get in the kitchen is the same as what is coming out of the showers, why this location doesnt have a simple stand alone water dispenser is beyond comprehension. If you think water is water and don't mind then this won't bother you, but for those that like to drink a lot of water and dont like drinking nasty water than you'll notice that here.

[diamond]

I'm sorry for the rant you're about to read, but 'Spaulding quality food?' Maybe its just me... but I think food should taste GOOD! Especially on study... when you want people eating everything. Gee.... maybe making it taste good would accomplish that. Ya hear me Spaulding!? Your 'chef' needs to be let go. If 16 out of 20 people on study think your sweet potatoes are nasty... and we write bad review after bad review... WHY do you keep serving them to us, study after flippin study?! Oh... because you want to keep your $25 for write ups? I see... so the bad food is a way for you to save money. I get it. Makes sense.

And what's with the 'yeah... we don't have a microwave anymore.' You know why? Because STAFF blew it up by waaaaay overdoing popcorn. Yeah... you can get a new one for $65 you know. But no... its a 'fire hazard' and 'even the fire department won't let us have one.' Ummm.. do you think I'm retarded?

Oh... and they won't provide a toaster for bagels because 'its a fire hazard' too. Oh, please! And my hair dryer isn't? My electric heating pad isn't? My curling iron isn't? The warning on my hair dryer speaks of SHOCK and DEATH, you know. If its such a LEGAL LIABILITY then why does and many other clinics PROVIDE THEM?

Sorry. I just got heated thinking about the 'logic' they try and throw at you sometimes.

End rant.