Data collection and analysis
Eligible patients and/or surrogates were provided with study information primarily in-person by trained study personnel until COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 necessitated remote options such as electronic consent (Shed-MEDS) or telephone consent (VA DROP). Telephone consent required a second study team member to serve as a witness to the consent procedure. When an eligible patient or surrogate declined participation, study personnel attempted to elicit their reason(s) with structured prompts (e.g., “would you be willing to share the reason you are not interested in participating in this study?”) then documented their responses using standardized forms to track study enrollment. Initial content coding for each documented reason followed by content analysis to synthesize, integrate, and organize the data was performed by three of the co-authors (TS, EH, and AS) inductively to develop common categories and themes and a codebook with definitions for each theme, with discussion and agreement from all study team members [