Optimizing Pharmacist Team-Integration for ICU Patient Management (OPTIM): Recruitment and Retention Strategies to...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Pharmacy Practice
• Patient Outcomes

Background:

• Assessing pharmacist workload and patient outcomes is complex.
• Multicenter studies require robust participant recruitment and retention.
• Data on critical care pharmacist workload is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe innovative recruitment and retention methods for health professionals in a multicenter study.
• To facilitate data collection on pharmacist workload and patient-centered outcomes in the intensive care unit (ICU).
• To support the Optimizing Pharmacist-Team Integration for ICU patient Management (OPTIM) study.

Main Methods:

• Utilized professional listservs, pharmacy residency programs, and information sessions for recruitment.
• Implemented newsletters, office hours, enrichment sessions, and networking for retention.
• Employed a prospective data collection period followed by retrospective analysis.

Main Results:

• Achieved study completion across 64 sites.
• Collected data from 31,832 adult patients and 207 critical care pharmacists (CCPs).
• Data collection involved 53 trainees and 22 additional investigators with a <2% missingness rate.

Conclusions:

• Innovative recruitment and retention strategies are effective for large-scale health professional research.
• Successful engagement fostered teamwork and generated a substantial database of CCP workloads and patient data.
• These methods facilitated the largest dataset of CCP workloads and patient-level data to date.