Background

Identifying and approaching eligible participants for recruitment to research studies usually relies on healthcare professionals. This process is sometimes hampered by deliberate or inadvertent gatekeeping that can introduce bias into patient selection.
Objectives

Our primary objective was to identify and assess the effect of strategies designed to help healthcare professionals to recruit participants to research studies.
Search methods

We performed searches on 5 January 2015 in the following electronic databases: Cochrane Methodology Register, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, British Nursing Index, PsycINFO, ASSIA and Web of Science (SSCI, SCI-EXPANDED) from 1985 onwards. We checked the reference lists of all included studies and relevant review articles and did citation tracking through Web of Science for all included studies.
Selection criteria

We selected all studies that evaluated a strategy to identify and recruit participants for research via healthcare professionals and provided pre-post comparison data on recruitment rates.
Data collection and analysis

Two review authors independently screened search results for potential eligibility, read full papers, applied the selection criteria and extracted data. We calculated risk ratios for each study to indicate the effect of each strategy.
Main results

Eleven studies met our eligibility criteria and all were at medium or high risk of bias. Only five studies gave the total number of participants (totalling 7372 participants). Three studies used a randomised design, with the others using pre-post comparisons. Several different strategies were investigated. Four studies examined the impact of additional visits or information for the study site, with no increases in recruitment demonstrated. Increased recruitment rates were reported in two studies that used a dedicated clinical recruiter, and five studies that introduced an automated alert system for identifying eligible participants. The studies were embedded into trials evaluating care in oncology mainly but also in emergency departments, diabetes and lower back pain.
Authors' conclusions

There is no strong evidence for any single strategy to help healthcare professionals to recruit participants in research studies. Additional visits or information did not appear to increase recruitment by healthcare professionals. The most promising strategies appear to be those with a dedicated resource (e.g. a clinical recruiter or automated alert system) for identifying suitable participants that reduced the demand on healthcare professionals, but these were assessed in studies at high risk of bias.