Desiderata for Major Eligibility Criteria in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials.

Use of major eligibility criteria is a popular but unstudied folk practice for improving patient screening efficiency for clinical studies. This mixed-methods research study derived the desiderata for major eligibility criteria in breast cancer clinical trials. We randomly selected thirty interventional breast cancer clinical trials conducted at The New York-Presbyterian Hospital on the Columbia University Medical Center campus to create training (N=20) and testing (N=10) datasets. We utilized the Think-aloud protocol to gauge how clinical researchers identify and use major eligibility criteria to prescreen patients for clinical trials during an audio-recorded interview. A focus group session was held to understand the current prescreening process and investigate how it could be optimized to maximize recruitment rates. Using the grounded theory method, we annotated transcriptions to discover user rationale and desiderata behind major eligibility criteria in breast cancer clinical trials, which were later evaluated in a follow-up survey.