Journal article
Research assistants' experiences recruiting patients with psychosis into clinical trials: a qualitative study
- Abstract:
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Objectives
Treatments for patients diagnosed with psychosis need to be improved. Clinical trials are an important way of assessing the efficacy of new treatments. However, recruiting patients into trials is challenging. This study sought to better understand the reasons for this from the perspective of research assistants.
Design
A qualitative study underpinned by a critical realist ontology and contextualist epistemology.
Methods
Research assistants who had recruited patients with psychosis into trials, primarily of psychological interventions, were interviewed. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify themes.
Results
Overarching themes representing four types of factors influencing recruitment of patients with psychosis into clinical trials were generated: patient, clinical team, research team, and NHS infrastructure. Patients largely wished to take part in trials but needed time to build trust with research assistants. Clinical teams held the power in suggesting patients for trials; therefore, it was essential for research teams to build strong relationships with clinical staff. Research teams recruiting into trials benefited from lived experience expertise, support systems, and institutional knowledge. A key NHS infrastructure factor was that mental health staff had limited time to consider trials for their patients.
ConclusionsTrial participation needs to be made more accessible to patients with psychosis, who often want to take part but lack opportunities. Methods of increasing accessibility could include identifying and addressing barriers to referral from clinical teams, employing multiple recruitment strategies, and flexible appointment formats. Qualitative research with clinical teams and patients will also help in developing the understanding of barriers to recruitment.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s13063-025-08882-y
Authors
+ National Institute for Health and Care Research
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0187kwz08
- Grant:
- NIHR302033
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- Trials More from this journal
- Volume:
- 26
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 180
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2025-05-30
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-05-10
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1745-6215
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2127811
- Local pid:
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pubs:2127811
- Source identifiers:
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W4410906742
- Deposit date:
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2025-06-04
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Beckley et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- ©2025 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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