Table 5.

Adapted version of recommendations for enrolment of nursing homes according to Gismondi et al. [41]

1. Use all available state government resources, as well as professional and personal referrals, to identify and select nursing homes

2. Long-term care institutions should be explored and recruited at the planning stage of the clinical trial so that all the necessary Institutional Review Board requirements can be met in a timely fashion

3. First contact with nursing home management should be initiated by the project coordinator or leading team member in charge, not by a research assistant

4. Provide timely, precise study information with appropriate wording for the first nursing home contact

5. For more effective recruitment efforts, involve the primary care physicians (PCPs) in the nursing home as early in the process as possible. This not only helps in the identification of appropriate candidates but also encourages enrolment when the PCP agrees that the study is worthwhile

6. Enrolling residents should performed consecutively in one nursing ward after another instead of approaching all nursing wards simultaneously in order to keep the burden for the nursing staff as low as possible

7. Perform detailed patient record reviews prior to the consenting process

8. Provide adequate training sessions and incentives to assure the cooperation of the nursing home staff

9. Establish objective methods for the determination of mental competency as part of the protocol, and enlist the assistance of the nursing home social service staff

10. Anticipate the need for two research team members to be present during the consenting process

11. Reduce or eliminate any extra burden on the nursing home staff generated by the study

13. Anticipate that state public health regulations pertaining to long-term care facilities might impede on your study procedures

14. Collect data according to proposed, funded, and actual recruitment requirements to estimate project-specific staff time and costs

Extended recommendations emerging from our study are shown in italics. One recommendation from Gismondi et al. 2005 about focussing on nursing homes with large bed capacities to keep the number of sites manageable was skipped since it seemed to contradict the premise to develop interventions suitable for nursing homes with both small and large bed capacities