The lowdown

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the name for a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulties. It occurs when the lungs become inflamed, damaged, or narrowed, and one of the main causes is smoking – although the condition can affect those who have never smoked.

The issue of gender pay gaps is nothing new. In fact, national gender pay gap data has been collected for years – and the UK has actually made significant progress over the last 50 years, moving from a median gap of 47.6% in 1970 to 16.8% in 2016. Last year, along with over 10,000 other organisations across the country, as part of a requirement of the 2017 amendment to the 2010 Equality Act, English NHS organisations employing more than 250 people published headline details of their gender pay gap.

When conducting healthcare market research, it’s not uncommon to need to carry out research out of hours, especially when engaging with healthcare professionals with antisocial working hours or even just fitting in around patients’ busy lives. Whether you’re conducting an in-depth interview or a market research online community, a focus group or an ethnographic study, all out of hours market research requires careful organisation to ensure that your study goes off without a hitch. From scheduling to software testing, here are a few of our tried and tested tips to make sure your healthcare research runs as smoothly as possible.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. They work with hospitals, GP surgeries, dental practices, care homes and other health services to ensure they provide safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality patient care – whilst at the same time encouraging care services to improve. As well as registering care providers, the CQC also monitors, inspects and rates services, takes action to protect people who use care services and publishes its view on quality issues in health and social care.

 The quality of your participants is paramount to the success of your study. Good participants can be the difference between insightful, in-depth results that fulfil your objectives and fieldwork that just falls a bit flat. Let’s face it – it’s tricky to find terrific respondents these days, even when you’re working with the most generic of target audiences. But add low incidence rate diseases and HCPs who specialise in rare therapy areas into the mix and you’ve got even more work to do. Don’t worry though – it can be done! Here’s our six-step guide on how to recruit hard-to-reach participants so your medical fieldwork recruitment goes smoothly, no matter how strict your criteria.