Strategies for increasing physicians', nurses', and mammography technicians' participation in research

Breast cancer screening in physicians' daily practices needs greater emphasis. Increasing provider participation in research in this area can be a challenge as demonstrated in our study to test interventions targeting rural health care providers.

Recruitment methods for the randomized controlled trial involving 27 counties in the Mississippi River Delta region of Arkansas included the following: introductory letters and return postcards, mailed questionnaires, telephone calls, attendance at local medical staff meetings, and telephoning the primary care offices to set a time to meet the providers at their practice sites. This final recruitment strategy of telephoning the primary care offices and arranging with the office manager to bring a CME/CEU credit program included an on-site demonstration of a CBE technique and a free lunch.

Only the final strategy yielded provider participation for the study and was more successful in the experimental than the control counties. Providers in the control group could not receive the education program until after their post-test.

Successful approaches to enrolling physicians and nurses in a study involve careful use of their time and providing benefits.