Table 2.

Summary of studies included in the review

Author/year	Country	Setting	Participants	What is being researched	Summary of findings
Mentes and Tripp-Reimer (2002)	United States	Nursing home	Nurses, student nurses/nurse aides	Barriers and facilitators to conducting research in nursing homes	Barriers: resident characteristics; staff turnover, lack of leadership; administrative and organisational factors. Facilitators: nursing leader supportive of research, effective communication between NH staff and research team and well-coordinated data collection.
Shaw et al. (2005)	United Kingdom	General practice	Practice managers, general practitioners (GPs), practice nurses, research nurses, research coordinators	To explore the development of ‘research general practices’ in primary care.	The development of ‘research general practices’ was influenced by motivations to participate in research and by team roles and activity. GPs regarded their ‘research role’ as one of generating new knowledge, whereas nurses were motivated by the potential to improve care for their specific patient populations. ‘Research hierarchies’ were revealed in practices hosting research, with GPs often leading decision-making and nurses undertaking much of the groundwork. Lack of coordination across research team(s) appeared to hinder development, with shared decision-making helping to foster activity.
Potter et al. (2009)	United Kingdom	General practice	Practice nurses	Experiences of practice nurses recruiting to primary care research studies	There was generally positive engagement of practice nurses to participate in recruiting to a clinical trial. Dedicated time to recruit rather than financial incentives were considered important for nurses to recruit successfully. Nurses can unintentionally act as gatekeepers to recruitment, potentially restricting patients’ choice to take part in clinical trials.
Newall et al. (2009)	Australia	Community	District nurses	To explore the challenges and opportunities of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) conducted by two community nursing services	Key themes: being part of a trial, expectations versus the real RCT experience, benefits associated with implementing the trial, responses to the trial by other nurses not directly involved in the RCT, clients’ responses to the trial experience, challenges, strategies to refine research processes and further involvement in research.
Boase et al. (2012)	United Kingdom	General practice	Practice nurses	Experiences of practice nurses delivering a RCT in primary care	Time influenced nurses’ engagement with various aspects of the research, including the trial process and the delivery of the complex intervention. Nurses had to negotiate a range of competing loyalties due to interplay between their professional clinical role, their role in the research and within the practice teams.
Barr and Welch (2012)	Australia	Community	Nurse researchers	Workplace health and safety issues in nursing research	Researchers may perceive the level of risk of harm as lower than the actual or potential harm present in research projects. Nurse researchers do not consistently implement a risk assessment before or during research.
Fletcher et al. (2012)	N/A literature review	Primary and secondary care	GPs, hospital doctors, nurses, trainees, investigators and study staff	Synthesis of qualitative evidence related to clinicians’ attitudes towards recruiting RCTs	Communication of trial methods, education to remove misunderstanding of trial methods and reinforcement of the potential benefits of RCTs, both for clinicians and for their patients, were identified as future interventions aimed at improving clinicians’ recruitment activity.
Hange et al. (2015)	Sweden	Primary care, general practice	Nurses, practice managers, GPs and study nurses	Experiences of staff members participating in primary care research activities	Importance of including staff when designing clinical studies; information should be given continuously during the study and communication facilitated between different occupational groups working at the primary care centre.
Kyte et al. (2016)	United Kingdom	Local research networks and clinical trial units (primary and secondary care settings)	Research nurses, data managers/coordinators, trial managers and chief/principal investigators involved in clinical trials collecting PROMs	Opinions of researchers and trial personnel regarding the administration of patient-reported outcome measures in UK clinical trials	There are inconsistencies in the way PROMs are administered by trial staff. Such inconsistencies may reduce the quality of data and have the potential to introduce bias.
Lamb et al. (2016)	United Kingdom	Community	Community nurses	To identify the factors that impact upon the recruitment of participants to research studies in wound care from the community nurses’ perspective	Community nurses are positive about research activity and its potential benefits to patients and the clinical team. Research commitments are threatened by workload demands, which can influence timeliness of patient recruitment and lead to extra costs in terms of study extensions. Nurses consider additional factors beyond that of study eligibility criteria when determining patient suitability for a trial, and in thus doing, inadvertently introduce a pre-screening element to the recruitment process.
Morgan et al. (2017)	United States	In-person recruitment in clinical environments, telephone recruitment and community-based	Research coordinators, study nurses, professional recruiters and other professionals	How do study recruiters create positive relationships with potential participants?	Development of positive relationships with potential participants was credited to a number of behaviours: establishing a sense of personal connection (through reciprocal self-disclosures and other validating behaviours such as listening and expressing empathy); having repeated contact within a setting over a long or short period of time; demonstrating respect; exerting extra effort (or offering flexibility in the study process, usually in the form of appointment scheduling); and creating a sense of personal trust by being truthful.
Long et al. (2020)	United Kingdom	Acute and community care NHS trust settings	Research nurses	Research nurse perspectives on design and conduct of a RCT of wound care treatments	Involvement of research nurses (nurses specifically employed for research activities) in designing and developing processes for participant recruitment and retention, study conduct and intervention delivery is crucial to the successful conduct of a RCT.
Rose et al. (2021)	United Kingdom	Primary care	Health visitors (HVs) and community midwives	Exploration of factors that influence whether health visitors and community midwives invite patients to take part in research opportunities	Key barriers included time and resource constraints, perceived role conflict, competing priorities, and particularly for HVs, negative social influences from patients and researchers. Enablers included feeling confident to approach patients; positive influence from peers, managers and researchers; beliefs in the relevance of the research to healthcare and practice; and good knowledge about the study procedures, its rationale and the research topic.
McNiven et al. (2021)	United Kingdom	Primary and secondary care staff enrolled	Research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals	The experiences of research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in relation to professional identity.	Nurses and allied health professionals experience considerable challenges as they enter and transition to a research delivery role, with implications for their sense of professional identity. A change in the work that they undertake and how they are (or perceive they are) viewed by others has implications for their sense of professional and individual identity.