Patient advocacy and patient centredness in participant recruitment to randomized-controlled trials: implications for informed consent.

Context: With the routinization of evidence-based medicine and of the randomized-controlled trial (RCT), more patients are becoming 'sites of evidence production' yet, little is known about how they are recruited as participants; there is some evidence that 'substantively valid consent' is difficult to achieve.

Objective: To explore the views and experiences of nurses recruiting patients to randomized-controlled trials and to examine the extent to which their recruitment practices were patient-centred and patient empowering.

Design: Semi-structured in-depth interviews; audio recording of recruitment appointments; thematic interactional analysis (drawing on discourse and conversation analysis).