Australian oncologists find it “too hard” to recruit patients to clinical trials, contributing to low participant numbers, experts say.
Despite strong industry support for clinical trials 21 of 28 oncologists surveyed by researchers from the University of Sydney identified “poor organisational infrastructure, insufficient time, slow bureaucratic ethics approval processes, and lack of staff (medical oncologists and clinical trials coordinators),” as the most common barriers to enlisting patients.
Co-author of a letter to MJA detailing the findings, Professor Martin Tattersall, said the burden of bureaucratic processes oncologists wade through (reported recently in Oncology Update) was compounded by “the extra bureaucracy of our clinical trial participation” which keeps oncologists “at a distance from the patients and doing what [they] think [they] are meant...
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