Background and Aims: Recruitment of both patients and staff is often needed to appropriately measure the outcomes of implementation trials. The Care to Quit implementation trial in 9 oncology centres involved the measurement of smoking cessation care and smoking cessation outcomes over the course of over 3 years, including during the pandemic. This presentation aims to describe the variety of approaches to recruitment and retention across the 9 centres, and their relative success.
Methods: The preferred processes for recruiting patients to telephone interviews and recruiting staff to surveys and interviews were co-designed with each site and appropriately supported. Written research agreements were in place at each site/centre. A wide variety of options for recruitment were discussed and considered, with various options pilot-tested. Over the course of the trial some sites had changes of recruitment personnel and recruitment approach due to staff turnover and pandemic-related restrictions. Degree of success was assessed in terms of participant volume.
Results: The approach(es) agreed and implemented at each site over time are described. These include patient recruitment via one or more of: a dedicated non-clinical person, a dedicated clinical person, a non-dedicated clinical person and clinical trials teams. Some sites used face-to-face recruitment, some virtual recruitment and some used a combination of approaches. Some approaches were face-to-face, some were virtual or initiated by telephone. The most successful patient recruitment technique involved the employment of a dedicated non-clinical recruiter who was embedded in the clinic and recruited face-to-face. Staff recruitment for survey completion was primarily virtual via email, with some sites preferring face-to-face distribution of hard copy surveys.