Recruitment
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RECRUITMENT
The recruitment rate was lower than expected, highlighting both the need to increase the quantity of ‘possibly eligible’ patients and to increase interest during recruitment in a future RCT. During the provision of the verbal information to eligible patients, several were interested but found the intervention too time consuming. Probably, the recruitment rate would increase with fewer scheduled hours.Concerning the recruitment of PHC patients, we believe that the number of patients who submitted the screening tool was low (In future studies, a longer recruitment period may give access to a larger quantity of ‘possibly eligible’ patients. However, patients who have a planned surgery usually cannot wait long for this kind of intervention to start. Furthermore, a longer recruitment period may increase early dropouts before the intervention starts, as motivation to participate might decline over time or changes in living conditions may occur. Additionally, it may be more difficult to involve healthcare professionals for a longer period. A multicentre RCT can potentially be more efficient than a single-centre study and might possibly be performed sequentially with one centre at a time.Written information with health outcome results from the present study could increase interest among both patients and healthcare professionals. Furthermore, an educational session aiming to increase patients’ awareness of the studied health problem could be arranged, which has been shown to increase the recruitment rate [