Telephone consent: optimizing the recruitment of research participants

Abstract

Informed consent aims to protect the autonomy of potential research participants, providing the information necessary to make the right decision. This study reports the experience of collecting the informed consent via telephone from individuals. Telephone contact was successfully achieved for more than 90% of the participants; 1.16% understood the survey, but did not accept to participate; and 0.70% refused to provide telephone consent and required a consent form by mail. Women from all regions of Brazil participated and most had some procedure in the hospital at least 62 days after the date of the call. The results show that telephone consent can be an alternative method of recruiting patients given the high rate of acceptance of the participants and time gains in data collection.