Improving Access and Recruitment to Clinical Trials for Lung Cancer Patients: A Multi-Phase, Qualitative Focus Group and Co-Production Study.
Christopher Dodd, Benjamin Lond, Zoe Davey and 6 others
PMID 40813963WHAT IT FOUND
Lung cancer patients, carers and clinicians described nurses often avoiding clinical trial talks because of low confidence and knowledge.
A nurse poster and patient leaflet were made with them to prompt simple conversations. Their effect on recruitment was not tested.
Key findings
01Healthcare professionals reported low confidence and difficulty explaining clinical trials, and many said this made them hesitant to start trial conversations.
02Patients and carers said they often had no discussion of clinical trials and little understanding of what trials involve.
03The developed tool was designed as a patient-facing pamphlet and a nurse-facing poster to prompt simple trial conversations and reassure nurses they need not be trial experts.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study reports what participants said during focus groups and a workshop; it does not test whether the tool changes conversations or trial recruitment. The patient and carer sample was small and may have included people already interested in learning about trials. More patient and carer participants were women than men, and recruitment from non-White ethnocultural groups was limited, so the findings may not represent all lung cancer populations. Participants came from eight NHS sites in England and Scotland, and some sites had little experience of lung cancer trials, so local context may shape the barriers described. The paper states the tool may be used by other multidisciplinary team members and adapted to other settings, but it reports no data on those uses.
Declared interests
Funded by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that the Lung I-ACT tool improves trial discussions or recruitment. The paper reports focus groups and tool development only; a pilot study to test the tool is described as future work.