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Completed Not applicable Interventional Accepts healthy volunteers Results available

Use of Nudges To Enhance Enrollment in Critical Care Research

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT03284359

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03284359. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 6, 2026, 10:26 AM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Official title

A Randomized Trial of Nudges To Enhance Enrollment in Critical Care Research

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

Difficulties enrolling patients in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have long been recognized as a major barrier to successful evaluation of medical interventions. This is particularly problematic among intensive care unit (ICU) trials, of which more than one-third do not reach target enrollment. Under-enrollment and selective enrollment reduce RCTs' abilities to answer the research questions, thereby degrading the trials' scientific value and ethics. Current evidence suggests that financial incentives can ethically increase study enrollment, but this approach can pose large up-front costs to researchers. However, several nonmonetary behavioral interventions, or nudges, may offer novel and easily scalable approaches to increase enrollment in RCTs. The investigation team propose a 2-arm RCT in 10 ICUs at Penn to test the relative effectiveness of nudges on enrollment rates. Investigators hypothesize that a bundle of nudges during recruitment will increase enrollment rates compared to usual recruitment procedures will increase enrollment. Investigators will enroll 182 critically ill patients' surrogate decision makers(participants) to engage in recruitment procedures for a simulated RCT comparing two mechanical ventilation weaning protocols among mechanically ventilated patients. Investigators will also measure participants' assessment of risk of the simulated trial after the informed consent process. This work will provide the first empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of inexpensive, scalable nudges to potentially augment enrollment and reduce costs of future clinical trials.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT03284359
Recruitment status
Completed
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Lead sponsor
University of Pennsylvania
Other
Enrollment
182 participants

Conditions and interventions

Interventions

Behavioral

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years and older
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Accepts healthy volunteers

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Feb 18, 2018
Primary completion
Aug 7, 2019
Completion
Aug 7, 2019
Last update posted
Mar 2, 2021

2018 – 2019

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pennsylvania 19104-6006

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03284359, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Mar 2, 2021 · Synced Sep 6, 2026

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The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03284359 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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