Recruitment, Invitation Letters, Patients With Schizophrenia Clinical Trial
Official title:
Recruitment of Patients With Schizophrenia for "The Coronary Disease Project" Through Invitation Letters
Recruitment of patients with schizophrenia to clinical trials is difficult and in an ongoing
project different methods of recruitment have been used in order to recruit. One of the
methods used have been sending potential participant to the study an invitation letter with
information of the study and an invitation to make contact with a project nurse. Not many
patients have replied.
The aim of this study is to examine whether a simplified version of the invitation Letter, in
terms of information structure and written style will encourage more patients to make contact
to a project nurse.
It is found that patients suffering from Schizophrenia have a positive attitude concerning
participation in a research project but this doesn't always lead to recruitment. This might
be due to schizophrenia being a disease causing self-disturbances in communication and
contact to the surrounding World. It may lead to vulnerability in decision-making an a lower
decision making capacity. Language disability is one of the most notable cognitive deficits
in patients suffering from Schizophrenia and can be devided in to main components of usage
and comprehension. Patients experience poorer listening comprehension and reading
comprehension with no correlation to either age or education level and studies have shown
that patients with schizophrenia have low literacy.
Therefore the aim of this study is to examine whether a rewritten version of an invitation
Letter, taking in consideration patients low literacy and therefore written in simple
sentences and with a sequential structure of information will make more patients take contact
to a project nurse compared to patients receiving the original invitation Letter. The study
design is a randomized controlled trial testing the old letter against the new letter.
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