Is Christmas a Good Time for Patient Recruitment?

With Christmas on the horizon, patient recruitment activities often get paused or toned down.

It’s tempting to think that people will not be interested in investigating potential trials they could participate in while they’re enjoying the festivities of the season.

And certainly I’d say that makes sense for some trials and some therapy areas.

One thing I’ve found previously, though, is that a period where people are more likely to be spending time with their families and friends can actually be a good one for recruitment campaigns.

For example, I’ve been involved with many trials for dementia, and it can be that loved ones will recognize unusual behavior while people are spending more time together than they would normally.

The same obviously applies for other issues that might be more noticeable the longer people spend in each other’s company.

So I’d say it’s worth considering keeping your recruitment campaigns running over the holidays.

Effective and Quick Patient Recruitment Doesn’t Have to Wait Until a Trial is In Rescue

Over the years, I’ve been involved with many clinical trials that could be considered to be ‘in rescue’ as a result of not recruiting a sufficient number of patients in a timely manner.

Indeed, for some organizations, this seems to be the default approach, seemingly being factored into the strategy from the outset.

Which seems to be a particularly inefficient way of planning a recruitment campaign, as things would likely work out better if the plan was to ensure a good number of patients being recruited from the outset, rather than anticipating a slow start followed by a scramble to get the numbers up later down the line.

It’s an odd mindset that believes that the kind of activities required for enhanced recruitment can only be implemented once a trial needs to be rescued.

With surely a better way of going about things being to adopt those strategies at launch in order to achieve targets sooner.

Social Media Ads – Particularly on Facebook – are Still Valuable for Patient Recruitment

Recruiting patients through social media is something I’ve long been associated with. Indeed, I’ve been described as ‘the Godfather of social media patient recruitment.’

And while I now have a more overarching approach that encompasses many other methods and strategies, that kind of digital outreach is always something I believe can be beneficial.

I often have conversations with people where they say such things as ‘nobody uses Facebook anymore’, or ‘everyone under 30 uses TikTok or Instagram.’

And yet I still oversee or advise on campaigns that primarily use Facebook to promote trials, that continue to deliver a high number of applicants – whatever age range you might be targeting – in the same way as they always have done.

If that situation changes, I’ll start recommending digital outreach activity is focused elsewhere for attracting trial participants. But until that happens, Facebook remains a valuable element in the patient recruitment toolbox.

We Should be able to Come up With Effective Incentives for Clinical Trial Participation

Over the weekend I watched the first episode in the 3 part 60th anniversary series for Dr Who – a UK TV show in which the main character can travel to any point in space or time.

I started to wonder what might happen if The Doctor traveled to 1747 and brought back James Lind from the first recognized controlled clinical trial to view the way patient recruitment is conducted today.

Lind’s participants were all suffering from scurvy and would presumably have been motivated to take part purely on that basis. And I’m also assuming the potential threat of getting the lash may have provided something of an incentive back then.

Which makes me think there is quite a lot of gradation between that extreme and the issue of coercion we might be worried about today, such that we should really be able to come up with suitable – and ethical – incentives to encourage people to take part.

More Accessible Opening Hours Should Help Improve Recruitment Rates for Clinical Trials

With Thanksgiving being celebrated in the US last week, it got me thinking about business opening hours and accessibility. Obviously many shops remain open over holiday periods, so that people who work regular hours can visit them.

And I understand that it isn’t always convenient to have premises open outside of normal working hours – say up to 10pm, or on Sundays.

But it does raise the issue that if accessibility is one of the major problems in patient recruitment, we should really be trying to remove as many accessibility barriers as possible, in order to improve enrollment rates.

And I’m not simply directing this to the research sites. I think there’s an underlying principle that can be adopted – which possibly lies within the overall goal of decentralized trial methodology – such that maybe we can also think about making use of premises that are already open at times that may be more convenient?

Repurposing Content can be a Good Method for Reaching a Wider Audience

Repurposing content is something that many people are aware they should be doing, but often never actually get around to. I was reminded of this recently when a contact of mine recommended I use the Mind Maps from my latest book as the basis for individual articles – a process I have now started.

It had occurred to me that I could possibly make more of the content I’d put together for the book – including the elements I researched and developed but left out – so this was a good reminder that I already have the foundations for a series of articles that some people should find useful and interesting.

Another factor here, of course, is that not everyone wants to buy or read a book. Similarly not everyone wants to watch a video or listen to a podcast.

Repurposing the basic content in separate articles can thus provide a chance of it reaching a wider audience.

Newsworthy Events can be a Good Source of Content Ideas

Earlier this week I put together 2 videos that were both inspired by a sporting event of one kind or another – the Las Vegas Grand Prix and a maximum break in snooker.

This is the sort of thing I suggest can be quite useful for generating content ideas, with the Vegas Grand Prix being quite a newsworthy event, then me realizing I’d put out my 147th video without paying reference to snooker’s maximum break.

There are these kind of sporting events all year round that can help inspire ideas for piggybacking on them with a few related thoughts of your own.

And there are also plenty of other types of events to consider – political events such as elections or international meetings, music festivals, new product expos, corporate announcements etc.

I don’t recommend you try to shoehorn in a reference to your own field where it doesn’t really fit, but newsworthy events can certainly be a good source of ideas.

Sticking too Closely to Traditional Methods may Simply Deliver the Same Old Results

While reading up on Thanksgiving for yesterday’s post, I noticed the original date was the last Thursday of November. But it seems that, due to the fact the last Thursday could sometimes be 30th November – and thus there would be fewer shopping days until Christmas – the day for observing Thanksgiving was changed to the fourth Thursday in November. Which means it varies between November 22nd and 28th.

The reason I think this is interesting is the original date was chosen by none other than George Washington, with Abraham Lincoln then decreeing the last Thursday of the month.

Which indicates to me that focusing too much on preserving tradition – even those traditions enshrined by venerated individuals – ignores the simple facts of changing conditions.

Something we should be very mindful of in the field of patient recruitment, so that we don’t simply follow the path we’ve always gone down – resulting in the same results we’ve always had.

On Thanksgiving let’s Give Thanks to The Most Important People in our industry – Trial Participants

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. It isn’t a holiday we celebrate in the UK, and I’ve never been all that sure what the significance of it is.

Some searching online has unearthed that its origin was as part of a yearly harvest festival, with the thanks in question relating to being thankful for the blessings one enjoyed such as food, shelter etc.

Within the clinical trials industry, I would suggest the people most deserving of our gratitude are the trial participants, who give of their time and physiology to help further the cause of medical research.

I’ve said it before and will continue to do so – without patients taking part in trials, there would be no clinical trials industry, no big pharma companies, and ultimately no approved treatments for the vast range of diseases and conditions we are prone to as humans.

So let’s give thanks to trial participants on Thanksgiving.

Snooker’s Maximum Break of 147 has Lessons for the Process of Patient Recruitment

Continuing with the last vid’s sporting theme, I’m also a big fan of snooker – a cue sports game played on a table bigger than used for pool.

The snooker reference occurred to when I made my 147th video last week – 147 being the maximum break in snooker. (108 points higher than my own highest break).

Aside from being a content or idea generation possibility, the concept of constructing a maximum break in snooker has some parallels for patient recruitment and retention.

At the outset, we can see all the available elements we have to work with, and have a set of guidelines and rules to follow.

We know from past experience that specific actions will lead to specific results. And we should be looking at our next action before we complete our current one.

And underlying it all is that it’s rare for everything to come together perfectly, so we should have contingencies in place for when they don’t.