Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Aug 13, 2020)
Date Submitted: Aug 12, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Trial staff views on barriers recruitment in a digital intervention for psychosis and how to work around them: A qualitative study within a trial using focus groups and observation
ABSTRACT
Background:
Recruitment processes for clinical trials of digital interventions for psychosis are seldom described in detail within the literature. While trial staff have expertise in describing barriers and facilitators to recruitment a specific focus on understanding recruitment from the point of view of trial staff is rare.
Objective:
The primary aim of this study was to understand recruitment from the point of view of trial staff and discover what they considered to be important.
Methods:
We applied pluralistic ethnographic methods including analysis of trial documents, observation and focus groups explored the recruitment processes of the EMPOWER feasibility trial (ISRCTN: 99559262)
Results:
Recruitment barriers fell into two main themes; service characteristics (lack of time available to mental health staff to support recruitment, staff turnover, patient turnover (within Australia only), management styles of community mental health teams, physical environment) and clinician expectations (filtering effects and resistance to research participation). Trial staff negotiated these barriers through strategies such as emotional labour (trial staff managing feelings and expressions in order to successfully recruit participants) and trying to build relationships with clinical staff working within community mental health teams.
Conclusions:
Researchers in clinical trials for digital psychosis interventions face numerous recruitment barriers and do their best to work flexibly negotiate these barriers and meet recruitment targets. The recruitment process appeared to be enhanced by trial staff supporting each other throughout the recruitment stage of the trial. Clinical Trial: ISRCTN: 99559262
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