As a clinical trials program lead at the Kolling Institute, Dr Karen Bracken has long been driven to help researchers conduct trials in the best way possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cResearchers are passionate about their disease area and their patients, and they have so many unanswered questions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Karen comes from a family of clinicians, and while she didn\u2019t want to practise medicine, she was still drawn to working in the health space. She has spent most of her career working on clinical trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She says trials are a multidisciplinary activity that require collaboration between clinicians, statisticians, patients and the trial operations team. She sees her role in operations as the engine that makes the trial run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recruiting patients for trials is a complex area, and Karen completed a PhD on the topic after struggling to recruit men for a diabetes study she was working on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cI really wanted to make that trial a success and I was casting around for ideas on how I could recruit,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI realised that everyone was running their recruitment in an evidence-free zone. We often use the kitchen sink method where we brainstorm every single possible thing we can do to recruit participants to our trials and, in the process, waste a lot of time and money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Karen says she worked in a more intentional way, testing different strategies to understand why they did or did not work. They were eventually able to fully recruit for the trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Karen advises colleagues to properly plan their recruitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cBe realistic with yourself about how long it\u2019s going to take and how much money it\u2019s going to cost.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
She also says it\u2019s important to look at similar trials and speak to those who ran them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a whole world of people conducting trials, and there\u2019s a lot of evidence out there. People just aren\u2019t in the habit of looking for papers written about how to recruit participants.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Karen is eager to see greater diversity in trials, which includes recruiting more people who do not have English as their first language, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She says she wants everyone to be able to easily join a trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s important that we lead change in terms of inclusive health care.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2464,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,15],"tags":[42,33],"research-group-tax":[],"primary-research-area":[],"class_list":["post-2463","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musculoskeletal-research","category-new-treatment","category-research-excellence","tag-musculoskeletal","tag-rehabilitation"],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop-300x207.webp",300,207,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Dr-Karen-Bracken-edit-3_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ict-wordpress-support@sydney.edu.au","author_link":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/author\/ict-wordpress-supportsydney-edu-au\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As a clinical trials program lead at the Kolling Institute, Dr Karen Bracken has long been driven to help researchers conduct trials in the best way possible. \u201cResearchers are passionate about their disease area and their patients, and they have so many unanswered questions,\u201d she says. Karen comes from a family of clinicians, and while…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5191,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2463\/revisions\/5191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"research-group-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-group-tax?post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"primary-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary-research-area?post=2463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}