Motivators and challenges to research recruitment - A qualitative study with midwives

To explore midwives' experiences of recruiting participants to research studies conducted by other researchers.

An inductive qualitative study.

Individual face-to-face or telephone interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Interviews were analysed thematically.

One large urban maternity hospital in Ireland.

A purposive sample of 19 midwives FINDINGS: Three co-dependent themes emerged: intrinsic motivations, extrinsic motivations and challenges. Intrinsic motivations included midwives' personal beliefs about the value of research in general, its potential to improve practice, and their perceptions of how robust a particular study was and how it might impact on an individual woman and her baby. This included an inherent desire to shield some women, those who were perceived to have ongoing health issues or be anticipating a sub-optimal pregnancy outcome, from being offered study information. Extrinsic motivations related to the complexity of a research study and a specific researcher's characteristics. Challenges to offering potential participants research study information and, therefore, to successful recruitment included time constraints, workload and the volume of research being conducted simultaneously.

Participants navigated the two, sometimes competing, worlds of clinical practice and clinical research. Set in the context of workload and the volume of research being conducted simultaneously, midwives' perceptions of a study's robustness, clarity, its potential impact on individual women and ability to improve practice governed their motivation to offer information on research studies to potential participants.

Inviting clinicians to assess the study information may improve its clarity and create opportunities to discuss the potential value and recruitment bias. Researchers should be available to address clinicians' questions about particular research studies. At an organisational level, a system for managing the volume of research activity is required.