Strengths/limitations
trauma
Our findings are based on reports from research staff with experience of working within a range of pre-hospital trials, as well as staff occupying diverse roles (e.g. paramedics, consultants, registrars) within a pre-hospital trauma observational cohort study (the P-PRO study). Our findings therefore provide insight into the factors that affect trial processes using examples from multiple trials in the pre-hospital setting. Nevertheless, our sample comprised of individuals who were largely supportive about a future trial examining pre-hospital REBOA, particularly the P-PRO clinical investigators who were generally enthusiastic about REBOA. There may have been other factors identified if we had interviewed individuals who were more sceptical about REBOA or pre-hospital trauma trials more generally. Furthermore, the use of two different topic guides for our two cohorts of participants could be regarded as a study limitation. We did not collect any data pertaining to the clinicians’ experience in recruiting participants and how this affected their confidence in recruiting to trials (particularly in emergency, pre-hospital and critical care research). This might be important to explore in future research.