Institutional and Logistical Challenges to Clinician Recruitment for Research

Abstract

Background: Primary care clinicians are uniquely situated to discuss, educate, triage, and clinically manage sexual health concerns, and their insights are important when developing sexual health interventions. However, competing priorities make recruitment of clinicians for such types of research challenging.

Methods: We intended to conduct formative focus groups with primary care physicians (n = 6–8) and primary care advanced practice providers (n = 6–8) to gain insight into: (1) factors impacting sexual health history collection and (2) clinician STI management practices. Several institutional barriers limited successful recruitment of the proposed sample size.

Results: Insufficient recruitment of clinicians prevented completion of the focus-groups. Clinician access is first step to successful recruitment and was limited due to complex internal research approval protocols, limited email communication related to clinician email overload, and clinician privacy concerns. To mitigate these issues, we devised a multi-part strategy for future research that included: (1) prioritize need to build relationships early and validate the relationships often, (2) understand details of communication strategies used and preferred by sites (e.g., newsletters, emails), and (3) develop effective marketing/recruitment approaches tailored to clinician priorities, and (4) frequently assess organization’s policies that could impact study success.

Conclusions: Engaging clinicians as research participants is essential to understanding their perspectives and approaches impact the clinical processes of sexual health concerns in primary care settings. It is imperative that we identify and reduce institutional barriers to clinicians’ participation in research. Investigators must be prepared to start over if personnel loss or lack of involvement is an issue negatively impacting recruitment or ongoing participation.

Keywords: recruitment, clinician, enrollment, participant recruitment, implementation

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