Department of Health Policy and Management, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, Indiana University, 1050 Wishard Blvd, Ste 6140, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA.
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
BMC Prim Care. 2022 Apr 28;23(1):95. doi: 10.1186/s12875-022-01705-y.
Recruiting healthcare providers as research subjects often rely on in-person recruitment strategies. Little is known about recruiting provider participants via electronic recruitment methods. In this study, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we describe and evaluate a primarily electronic approach to recruiting primary care providers (PCPs) as subjects in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a decision support intervention.
We adapted an existing framework for healthcare provider research recruitment, employing an electronic consent form and a mix of brief synchronous video presentations, email, and phone calls to recruit PCPs into the RCT. To evaluate the success of each electronic strategy, we estimated the number of consented PCPs associated with each strategy, the number of days to recruit each PCP and recruitment costs.
We recruited 45 of 63 eligible PCPs practicing at ten primary care clinic locations over 55 days. On average, it took 17 business days to recruit a PCP (range 0-48) and required three attempts (range 1-7). Email communication from the clinic leaders led to the most successful recruitments, followed by brief synchronous video presentations at regularly scheduled clinic meetings. We spent approximately $89 per recruited PCP. We faced challenges of low email responsiveness and limited opportunities to forge relationships.
PCPs can be efficiently recruited at low costs as research subjects using primarily electronic communications, even during a time of high workload and stress. Electronic peer leader outreach and synchronous video presentations may be particularly useful recruitment strategies.
ClinicalTrials.gov , NCT04295135 . Registered 04 March 2020.
招募医疗保健提供者作为研究对象通常依赖于面对面的招募策略。对于通过电子招聘方法招募提供者参与者知之甚少。在这项 COVID-19 大流行期间进行的研究中，我们描述并评估了一种主要的电子方法，即通过电子同意书和一系列简短的同步视频演示、电子邮件和电话，招募初级保健提供者 (PCP) 作为一项决策支持干预的实用随机对照试验 (RCT) 的研究对象。
我们改编了现有的医疗保健提供者研究招聘框架，采用电子同意书和混合使用简短同步视频演示、电子邮件和电话，将 PCP 招募到 RCT 中。为了评估每种电子策略的成功，我们估计了与每种策略相关的同意的 PCP 数量、招募每位 PCP 的天数和招聘成本。
我们在 55 天内从十个初级保健诊所招募了 63 名合格的 PCP 中的 45 名。平均而言，招募一名 PCP 需要 17 个工作日（范围 0-48），需要尝试三次（范围 1-7）。来自诊所领导的电子邮件沟通导致了最成功的招聘，其次是在定期诊所会议上进行的简短同步视频演示。我们每个招募的 PCP 花费约 89 美元。我们面临电子邮件响应率低和建立关系机会有限的挑战。
即使在工作量和压力大的时期，也可以通过主要使用电子通信以低成本高效地招募 PCP 作为研究对象。电子同行领导外联和同步视频演示可能是特别有用的招聘策略。
ClinicalTrials.gov，NCT04295135。于 2020 年 3 月 4 日注册。
