Clinical Research CoordinatorCourse 5 of 8

Clinical Research Coordinator

Full course · Participant Management: Screening to Retention

Physician referral networks and community outreach — Participant Management: Screening to Retention

Physician referral networks and community outreach

Build sustainable physician referral networks and community partnerships for ethical, effective participant recruitment.

24 min

The oncologist down the hall

There is an oncologist three floors above your research office who sees 40 patients a week with the exact tumor type your Phase II trial is studying. She has been treating this population for 14 years. She knows their histories, their comorbidities, their prior lines of therapy. By any reasonable estimate, she has encountered at least 200 patients over the past two years who would have met your study's eligibility criteria.

She has never referred a single one.

This is not because she opposes clinical research. She co-authored two publications last year. It is not because she is unaware of your study — the principal investigator mentioned it at a departmental meeting six months ago. It is because nobody has ever made it easy for her to refer. Nobody has given her a one-page summary she can review in the 90 seconds between patients. Nobody has explained the eligibility criteria in language that maps to her clinical decision-making. Nobody has told her what happens after she sends a patient your way — whether she will hear back, whether her patient will still be under her care, whether the study treatment will interact with the medications she has prescribed.

The gap between awareness and action in physician referral is almost never about willingness. It is about friction. And eliminating that friction — systematically, professionally, and within ethical boundaries — is one of the most powerful recruitment strategies a coordinator can deploy.

This lesson teaches you how to build referral networks that produce sustained enrollment, how to extend those networks into the community through partnerships with advocacy organizations and health centers, and how to navigate the ethical boundaries that govern referral relationships.

What you will learn4 objectives

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

Build physician referral networks by identifying target specialties, developing relationships, and creating IRB-approved study materials designed for referring physicians
Design referral follow-up and feedback processes that maintain referring physician engagement while respecting participant confidentiality
Establish community outreach partnerships with advocacy organizations, community health centers, and support groups for ethical, culturally appropriate participant identification
Navigate ethical boundaries in referral relationships including referral fees, fair market value, and anti-kickback considerations

Progress saves itself — finish reading and this lesson completes

This is just the beginning

The oncologist down the hall