How to expand awareness of and recruitment to research: a mixed methods feasibility study

Background: While high quality clinical research improves patient care, many studies fail to recruit to target, reducing the quality and impact of results. To date, most interventions to improve recruitment have targeted patients and few have proved successful. While staff with opportunities to refer patients to research (e.g. doctors, specialist nurses) are key, ethnographic work suggests that staff without such opportunities (e.g. staff nurses, receptionists) can also affect recruitment. This study surveyed staff attitudes about research and piloted a package of interventions to increase the number of patients offered and accepting research participation.

Methods: A survey (paper or online) of all staff organizing or delivering patient care in the rheumatology specialty of a large teaching hospital (n = 120), was conducted at baseline and again after six months. A package of interventions was implemented, using education, prompts and feedback to raise staff knowledge of local clinical research and its impact. These interventions included short talks, clinic room posters and regular feedback in departmental meetings - all tailored to their specific audience. Monthly recruitment figures to clinical research were extracted from departmental logs before and during the interventions. Two staff focus groups (n = 7, n = 13) were convened during the interventions period. Qualitative techniques (open and focused coding, constant comparison, memoing and mapping) were used to analyse the resulting transcripts. Emergent themes were discussed and challenged by the wider research team.