Bradford Natalie, Cashion Christine, Condon Paula, Rumble Shelley, Bowers Alison
Queensland University of Technology, Cancer and Palliative Care Outcomes Centre and School of Nursing, Brisbane, Australia.
Queensland University of Technology at Centre for Children's Health Research, 62 Graham St, South Brisbane, Queensland, 4101, Australia.
BMC Med Res Methodol. 2021 Aug 28;21(1):178. doi: 10.1186/s12874-021-01371-1.
Variations in clinical practice contribute to negative outcomes for children with cancer. Research in this area is imperative to standardise practice, yet such research is challenging to undertake, and a significant proportion of studies fail. A common reason for failure is poor recruitment, yet little information is available to support researchers and clinicians planning such research.
Our primary aim was to describe the recruitment strategies and outcomes in a tertiary children's hospital across multiple observational supportive care studies. Secondary aims were to establish principles to improve both recruitment strategies and the reporting of recruitment. We undertook a retrospective descriptive analysis of the recruitment logs and data from three studies in pediatric oncology. The mean time to recruit one participant was calculated. Common reasons for not approaching eligible participants and reasons potential participants declined are described.
Of the 235 potential candidates across all studies, 186 (79%) were approached and of these 125 (67%) provided consent, with 117 (63%) completing baseline measures. We estimated recruitment per participant required an average 98 min of experienced research nurse time. Four factors are described that influence recruitment and six principles are outlined to maximise recruitment and the generalisability of research findings.
We highlight the recruitment experiences across three different projects in children's cancer supportive care research and provide a roadmap for other researchers planning to undertake clinical research in pediatrics.
临床实践中的差异会给癌症患儿带来负面结果。该领域的研究对于规范实践至关重要，但此类研究开展起来具有挑战性，且很大一部分研究失败了。失败的一个常见原因是招募不佳，然而几乎没有信息可支持计划开展此类研究的研究人员和临床医生。
我们的主要目的是描述一家三级儿童医院在多项观察性支持性护理研究中的招募策略和结果。次要目的是确立改进招募策略和招募报告的原则。我们对儿科肿瘤学三项研究的招募记录和数据进行了回顾性描述分析。计算了招募一名参与者的平均时间。描述了未接触符合条件参与者的常见原因以及潜在参与者拒绝的原因。
在所有研究的235名潜在候选人中，186人（79%）被接触，其中125人（67%）提供了同意，117人（63%）完成了基线测量。我们估计每名参与者的招募平均需要经验丰富的研究护士98分钟的时间。描述了影响招募的四个因素，并概述了六个原则以最大限度地提高招募率和研究结果的普遍性。
我们强调了儿童癌症支持性护理研究中三个不同项目的招募经验，并为其他计划在儿科开展临床研究的研究人员提供了路线图。
