Create a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter with updates on the research program. Celebrate your successes as a research program by announcing when studies are published and sharing the publications with all staff. Include testimonials from patients and families who have participated in research to provide positive feedback.

Build a social media profile for your program on a platform that will reach your ICU team - e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Research staff can attend morning huddles in the unit on an intermittent basis to share information about research studies and program updates. This is a great way to reach bedside clinical staff.

Provide updates on the research program to the unit council, which usually has membership from MDs, non-MD clinical staff and administration.

Engage clinical staff in the decision about which studies to join. Try to find studies that fit within the interests of the ICU (e.g., in a unit with a lot of trauma you might want to do trauma studies).

Create an interdisciplinary research council involving physicians, nurses, RTs, and other allied health staff. This helps engage non-MD staff in the research program and makes them stakeholders in the program’s success.

Offer food at “Lunch and Learns” or other brief educational events for clinical staff to teach them about ongoing studies. Hold “journal clubs” to review the results of studies in which your ICU has participated. For RT or allied health studies, hold educational events to teach them the protocol (sponsors may be willing to pay for this). Consider setting targets (i.e., enrolment targets) with a “reward” at the end for the entire ICU.

Ensure that co-investigators and research staff are credited on publications resulting from studies. Authorship can be negotiated during contract negotiations.

Encourage MD and non-MD staff to become investigators on studies that fit within their areas of interest.

Know who the financial contact person is at your institution.

Know your account number.

Know the stipulations in your contract. E.g., Are you required to report annually on the funds spent? Do unspent funds have to be returned?

Know how your funds are being sent to you. (E.g., cheque or wire transfer)

Before you begin recruitment, set up a document (e.g., Excel) that tracks patient IDs and the milestone payments you are anticipating receiving for completed work. As each participant is recruited to the study, add them to the document. As each milestone is met add them to the document, keep track of what is expected, invoiced, and received financially.

Ensure that you receive regular reports from your finance department about what funds have been received to your account and what expenses have come out.

CCIRNet is always available to help (ccirnet@gmail.com) and we can also put you in touch with other ICU research program leads who can sympathize with what you are going through! You can also speak with academic ICU researchers who encounter many of the same issues.

Don’t underestimate what you have accomplished by starting and running a research program in a community ICU. The challenges you are facing are not unique and everyone has moments of success and moments of frustration.

Ask one of your colleagues to co-lead the ICU research program with you so you have support when things get tough.

If you are having trouble with a specific study, try speaking to the sponsor to see if they can provide you with additional support or help trouble-shoot the problems you are encountering.

Volunteers can be a huge help with data collection and other simple research tasks. However, there is a big upfront time commitment to train and mentor the volunteers. This requires a large commitment on the part of the research coordinator to build the program.

Some hospitals have a research volunteer program you may be able to access. If there’s no existing research volunteer program at your hospital, you can usually bring volunteers onboard through the regular volunteer program to work within the research program. Volunteers will need to do their research certification to work on the research program including Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and Division 5 training. You will need to work with your local volunteer program to establish an onboarding process that meets the hospital privacy, IT, and volunteer association policies.

Volunteers can work principally on data collection and data entry. With appropriate training, they can also help with survey administration, follow-up calls, filing, scanning, and sourcing documents; and in certain centres with appropriate training, consent.

Students need volunteer hours for applying to ongoing education. You can confirm their completion of hours and provide references as well. Ensure that you provide a certificate at the end of the program that the volunteers can use for future job or academic applications. They also end up with their research certificates (GCP, Division 5, etc.) and with practical work experience in a healthcare environment.

A volunteer program requires a lot of upfront investment from the research team but can pay off in terms of assistance when volunteers are well trained and enthusiastic. It’s a great way to find longer-term workers who are motivated and well trained, and provides a pool of potential RAs, RCs, etc.

Although the volunteers are free, the time spent training and supervising them is not free. For this reason, volunteers may be more appropriate for established research programs that have multiple research staff available to assist with training and supervision.

There’s no way to avoid disruption when key staff members leave. Look ahead to people who can take over when current staff leave the program. If you lose key study staff, let study sponsors know that you will be pausing recruitment and work with hospital administration to hire and train replacement staff quickly. Ideally, you need at least one experienced staff member who can help train others. If you lose your most experienced research staff member, try to hire an experienced person in their place. It is quite difficult to run a research program without any experienced staff members as there are a lot of technical details involved in running a research study. The additional cost of an experienced research coordinator is worth the money as you will avoid a lot of expensive pitfalls.

You can empower your your research coordinator(s) by providing them with flexibility and autonomy (depending on their experience level) while being there if they require your support or guidance. Allowing some level of work hour flexibility would also contribute to job satisfaction. Ensure that you hold regular team meetings and social activities for team building purposes.