Clinical Research CoordinatorCourse 5 of 8

Clinical Research Coordinator

Full course · Participant Management: Screening to Retention

Building a recruitment plan: channels, timelines, and metrics — Participant Management: Screening to Retention

Building a recruitment plan: channels, timelines, and metrics

Learn to design structured, multi-channel recruitment plans with defined channels, responsible parties, timelines, and measurable success metrics.

25 min

The enrollment target lands on your desk

The sponsor expects 15 participants enrolled in six months. The protocol targets a rare oncology population — adults with relapsed or refractory disease who have exhausted at least two prior lines of therapy, have adequate organ function, and are willing to travel to the site for biweekly infusions. The site has never recruited for an oncology trial before. The principal investigator is enthusiastic but busy. The study coordinator has five other active protocols. And no one has written a recruitment plan.

This scenario is not hypothetical. It plays out at research sites every month, across every therapeutic area, in cities and academic medical centers worldwide. And the outcome, more often than not, is under-enrollment. According to published analyses, roughly 80% of clinical trials fail to meet their enrollment timelines, and approximately 30% of investigative sites enroll zero participants. Zero. Not because the patients do not exist, but because no one built a credible plan to find them, reach them, and bring them through the door.

I have spent years watching this pattern repeat, and I can tell you with confidence: the single most reliable predictor of recruitment success is not the therapeutic area, the inclusion criteria, or the visit burden. It is whether someone sat down before the first participant was screened and built a structured, written, multi-channel recruitment plan with defined responsibilities, realistic timelines, and measurable metrics. That is what this lesson teaches you to do.

What you will learn4 objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Design a structured, multi-channel recruitment plan that specifies channels, responsible parties, timelines, and measurable success metrics tailored to the study population
Describe the six core recruitment channels and evaluate each for appropriateness in specific trial contexts
Define and calculate key recruitment metrics including contacts per channel, pre-screening yield, screening conversion rate, screen failure rate, and enrollment velocity
Explain the concept of a recruitment plan as a living document with defined trigger points for strategy adjustment and sponsor escalation

Progress saves itself — finish reading and this lesson completes

This is just the beginning

The enrollment target lands on your desk