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Interventions to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials: a survey and workshop to assess current practice and future priorities.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Despite significant investment in infrastructure many trials continue to face challenges in recruitment and retention. We argue that insufficient focus has been placed on the development and testing of recruitment and retention interventions. METHODS:In this current paper, we summarize existing reviews about interventions to improve recruitment and retention. We report survey data from Clinical Trials Units in the United Kingdom to indicate the range of interventions used by these units to encourage recruitment and retention. We present the views of participants in a recent workshop and a priority list of recruitment interventions for evaluation (determined by voting among workshop participants). We also discuss wider issues concerning the testing of recruitment interventions. RESULTS:Methods used to encourage recruitment and retention were categorized as: patient contact, patient convenience, support for recruiters, monitoring and systems, incentives, design, resources, and human factors. Interventions felt to merit investigation by respondents fell into three categories: training site staff, communication with patients, and incentives. CONCLUSIONS:Significant resources continue to be invested into clinical trials and other high quality studies, but recruitment remains a significant challenge. Adoption of innovative methods to develop, test, and implement recruitment interventions are required.

SUBMITTER: Bower P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4210542 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Interventions to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials: a survey and workshop to assess current practice and future priorities.

Bower Peter P Brueton Valerie V Gamble Carrol C Treweek Shaun S Smith Catrin Tudur CT Young Bridget B Williamson Paula P

Trials 20141016

<h4>Background</h4>Despite significant investment in infrastructure many trials continue to face challenges in recruitment and retention. We argue that insufficient focus has been placed on the development and testing of recruitment and retention interventions.<h4>Methods</h4>In this current paper, we summarize existing reviews about interventions to improve recruitment and retention. We report survey data from Clinical Trials Units in the United Kingdom to indicate the range of interventions us ...[more]

PMID: 25322807

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Project description:BackgroundA shortage of primary care physicians has been reported in many countries. Primary care systems are diverse and the challenges leading to a decline in workforce are at times context-specific and require tailored solutions. Inviting frontline clinicians to share their insights can help identify optimal strategies for a particular setting. To determine priorities for family physicians' and general practitioners' recruitment and retention in Singapore, we invited primary care physicians to rank pertinent strategies using PRIORITIZE, a transparent, systematic priority-setting approach.MethodsThe study advisory board, consisting of representatives of Singapore's key primary care stakeholders, determined the criteria for prioritising of general practitioners (GPs) and family physicians (FPs) recruitment and retention strategies in Singapore. A comprehensive list of GPs and FPs recruitment and retention strategies was extracted from a recent systematic review of the relevant literature. A questionnaire listing the strategies and the scoring criteria was administered online to doctors practicing in public and private sector in Singapore. Respondents' scores were combined to create a ranked list of locally most relevant strategies for improving GPs and FPs recruitment and retention.ResultsWe recruited a diverse sample of 50 GPs and FPs practicing in a variety of primary care settings, many with a range of additional professional responsibilities. Around 60 and 66% of respondents thought that there was a problem with recruitment and retention of GPs and FPs in Singapore, respectively. Strategies focusing on promoting primary care by emphasizing the advantages and enhancing the status of the profession as well as training-related strategies, such as sub-specialisation and high-quality rotations were considered priorities for improving recruitment. For retention of GPs and FPs, improving working conditions by increasing GPs' and FPs' salary and recognition, as well as varying or reducing time commitment, were seen as the most important strategies. The ranking between physicians working in public and private sector was mostly similar, with nine out of the top ten recruitment and retention strategies being the same.ConclusionPrimary care physicians' ranking of recruitment and retention strategies for GPs and FPs in Singapore provide important insight into the challenges and the solutions as seen by the members of the profession themselves. This information can guide future policy and decision making in this area.

Project description:Effective research, education, and outreach efforts by the Arabidopsis thaliana community, as well as other scientific communities that depend on Arabidopsis resources, depend vitally on easily available and publicly-shared resources. These resources include reference genome sequence data and an ever-increasing number of diverse data sets and data types. TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource) and Araport (originally named the Arabidopsis Information Portal) are community informatics resources that provide tools, data, and applications to the more than 30,000 researchers worldwide that use in their work either Arabidopsis as a primary system of study or data derived from Arabidopsis. Four years after Araport's establishment, the IAIC held another workshop to evaluate the current status of Arabidopsis Informatics and chart a course for future research and development. The workshop focused on several challenges, including the need for reliable and current annotation, community-defined common standards for data and metadata, and accessible and user-friendly repositories/tools/methods for data integration and visualization. Solutions envisioned included (a) a centralized annotation authority to coalesce annotation from new groups, establish a consistent naming scheme, distribute this format regularly and frequently, and encourage and enforce its adoption. (b) Standards for data and metadata formats, which are essential, but challenging when comparing across diverse genotypes and in areas with less-established standards (e.g., phenomics, metabolomics). Community-established guidelines need to be developed. (c) A searchable, central repository for analysis and visualization tools. Improved versioning and user access would make tools more accessible. Workshop participants proposed a "one-stop shop" website, an Arabidopsis "Super-Portal" to link tools, data resources, programmatic standards, and best practice descriptions for each data type. This must have community buy-in and participation in its establishment and development to encourage adoption.

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Interventions to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials: a survey and workshop to assess current practice and future priorities.

Publications

Interventions to improve recruitment and retention in clinical trials: a survey and workshop to assess current practice and future priorities.

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