Overcoming recruitment challenges in palliative care clinical trials.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Palliative care is increasingly viewed as a necessary component of cancer care, especially for patients with advanced disease. Rigorous clinical trials are thus needed to build the palliative care evidence base, but clinical research-especially participant recruitment-is difficult. Major barriers include (1) patient factors, (2) "gatekeeping," and (3) ethical concerns. Here we discuss an approach to overcoming these barriers, using the Palliative Care Trial (PCT) as a case study.

Patients and methods

The PCT was a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial randomized controlled trial (RCT) of different service delivery models to improve pain control in the palliative setting. It used a recruitment protocol that fused evidence-based strategies with principles of "social marketing," an appro

SUBMITTER: LeBlanc TW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3825289 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature