TY - JOUR T1 - Recruiting participants for injury studies in emergency departments JF - Injury Prevention JO - Inj Prev SP - 75 LP - 77 DO - 10.1136/ip.2006.013730 VL - 13 IS - 2 AU - Denise Kendrick AU - Ronan Lyons AU - Nicola Christie AU - Elizabeth Towner AU - Jonathan Benger AU - Lindsay Groom AU - Frank Coffey AU - Phillip Miller AU - Rachel Murphy Y1 - 2007/04/01 UR - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/13/2/75.abstract N2 - Emergency departments have the potential to maximize recruitment efficiency and minimize recruiting costs For many studies, especially those requiring incident injury cases, emergency departments are the most suitable location for recruiting participants.1 Although the total number of injury attendances is greater in outpatient or primary care settings than in emergency departments,2 geographical spread and the mixture of incident and prevalent cases make recruiting participants from these sites less feasible, more time consuming and more costly. Emergency departments, on the other hand, will see the largest number and spectrum of injury cases, usually presenting very shortly after injury in a single healthcare setting. This has the potential to maximize recruitment efficiency and minimize recruiting costs. Recruiting in emergency departments also provides opportunities to study the aetiology and epidemiology of injuries before recall of events diminishes with time and to enroll participants for studying short- and long-term consequences of injury. They are the only setting in which complete ascertainment of incident cases of specific injuries may be possible—for example, virtually all patients with long bone fractures will attend an emergency department, fewer will attend primary care and a proportion will be admitted to hospital, but this will vary between hospitals depending on a range of factors including clinician preference for management options, bed availability, social circumstances.3,4 Recruiting cases from emergency departments therefore, has the potential to minimize the selection bias inherent in recruiting such cases from other sites. Inspite of the potential for recruiting injured patients to studies within emergency departments, there are characteristics of the clinical setting and of injured patients which may make recruitment difficult. Emergency departments are often busy and crowded places, and the demand for emergency care continues to increase.5 Many emergency departments experience shortfalls in medical staffing and difficulties in recruiting and … ER -