Patient recruitment in clinical research is a challenging task that requires careful planning. New drug development processes often get stuck due to the non-availability of a sufficient number of available participants. Clinical research patient recruitment is one of the crucial factors in clinical trials that determine the success of the entire procedure. Poor patient enrollment often makes unnecessary delays and stands as a barrier for the implementation of new therapies.
Not only that, it raises the total budgetary expenditure of the entire project. The overestimation of investigators on the availability of patients for randomized controlled trials often leads to insufficient and untimely patient recruitment that Lasagna’s Law and Muench’s Third Law specify as a common error in clinical research patient recruitment.
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Factors Influence Clinical Research Patient Recruitment
The patient recruitment suffers from various patient and investigator factors. Understanding the patient’s and investigator’s concerns is crucial for developing effective clinical research patient recruitment. Here are some of the real and hypothetical reasons why patients do not get enrolled for clinical trials.
- Often patients do not want to enroll in clinical trials because many patients have preferences for certain therapies.
- Many of them do not understand the clinical trial procedure, and they feel reluctant to participate because they have no idea about the treatment.
- Patients’ unwillingness to enroll for treatment because of fear of having a negative outcome.
- Investigators face the difficulty of clinical research patient recruitment many times because clinical trials often have complex study protocols that need to be followed.
- Investigators face the complexity of getting the patient’s consent to start the clinical trial.
Effective Clinical Research Patient Recruitment Strategy
An effective recruitment strategy should be developed for successful clinical research development.
- The patients should be recruited all together in a batch recruitment approach, and the trial should be executed simultaneously. It will save time and cost.
- Clear communication with the patient regarding the trial procedures and therapies will surely reduce complexity and provide a better outcome.
- Patients often feel the time constraint to fit the trial schedule. The thoughtful design of clinical trial protocols considering the patient’s time commitment is an effective solution for better outcomes.
- Electronic communication has come up with a fruitful solution for clinical research patient recruitment. The expanded social network enhances the scope of patient recruitment. The research study says that 51.9% of patient recruitment is done through social media.
- Increasing the scientific and professional incentives for investigators and patients is expected to yield higher patient enrollment outcomes with added enthusiasm among the investigators.
Investigators considering clinical research for new drug development should consider strategic decision-making for clinical research patient recruitment. Planning with effective strategies minimizes the overall cost of clinical trial procedures. Maintain adequate sample size by sustaining continuous patient recruitment throughout the phases. Simplification of the study protocol along with evaluation of possible sources of patient recruitment are paramount to success. Identification of sites with continuously low recruitment and addressing the specific issue should be one of the primary objectives of the recruitment strategy.
