The role of patient ergonomics in improving health research participation

Patient ergonomics advances understanding of patient work to support individuals in managing health and health care, which can be expanded to include health research. While health research enables improvements in care delivery and health outcomes, participant recruitment, enrollment, and retention challenges hamper effective research participation, impede success of research studies, and influence the validity and generalizability of findings. Recent trends in health research create new opportunities to engage patients in research but require careful attention to patient ergonomics and human factors considerations to ensure they successfully address participant needs and contexts. This article describes the research participation process and related patient ergonomics considerations, summarizes patient ergonomic factors identified in the literature that influence participation, discusses how patient ergonomics can be expanded to understand and address challenges to health research participation using two exemplar research programs, and identifies opportunities to include health research participation as part of patient ergonomics.