• Alisha Hussey, Kaela Pozsgay, Carolyn M L Crawford, Yueqiao Elle Wang, Anthony Lau, Andrew Kestler, and Jessica Moe.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• CJEM. 2024 May 1; 26 (5): 349358349-358.

PurposeWe utilized quality improvement (QI) approaches to increase emergency department (ED) provider engagement with research participant enrollment during the opioid crisis and coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The context of this work is the Evaluating Microdosing in the Emergency Department (EMED) study, a randomized trial offering buprenorphine/naloxone to ED patients through randomization to standard or microdosing induction. Engaging providers is crucial for participant recruitment to our study. Anticipating challenges sustaining long-term engagement after a 63% decline in provider referrals four months into enrollments, we applied Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to develop and implement an engagement strategy to increase and sustain provider engagement by 50% from baseline within 9 months.MethodsOur engagement strategy was centered on Coffee Carts rounds: 5-min study-related educational presentations for providers on shift; and a secondary initiative, a Suboxone Champions program, to engage interested providers as study-related peer educators. We used provider referrals to our team as a proxy for study engagement and report the percent change in mean weekly referrals across two PDSA cycles relative to our established referral baseline.ResultsA QI approach afforded real-time review of interventions based on research and provider priorities, increasing engagement via mean weekly provider referrals by 14.5% and 49% across two PDSA cycles relative to baseline, respectively.ConclusionsOur Coffee Carts and Suboxone Champions program are efficient, low-barrier, educational initiatives to convey study-related information to providers. This work supported our efforts to maximally engage providers, minimize burden, and provide life-saving buprenorphine/naloxone to patients at risk of fatal overdose.© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP)/ Association Canadienne de Médecine d'Urgence (ACMU).

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