Barriers and strategies for recruiting study participants in clinical settings

Recruiting participants for research studies is often a challenging task. Recruitment requires careful planning, collaboration, and flexibility on the part of researchers and health care providers at the recruitment sites. This article describes six major barriers to recruiting study participants as identified from a review of the literature and from the coauthors' research experiences. These barriers include challenges related to regulations of the Health Insurance Portabililty and Accountability Act (HIPAA), health care providers' work burden, providers' financial disincentives, competition, health care provider concerns regarding research, and provider protection of patients. Each barrier is described, and specific strategies are suggested based on the empirical literature. In some instances, the coauthors' experiences are also shared. Keywords: clinical research; HIPAA; recruitment barriers; participant recruitment