Enhancing the health of NHS staff: eTHOS — protocol for a randomised controlled pilot trial of an employee health screening clinic for NHS staff to reduce absenteeism and presenteeism, compared with usual care

Table 3 Progression criteria informing decision about full trial

		Progression criteria
	Description	Green (go)	Amber (pause)	Red (stop)
Recruitment^a	% of invited employees consenting to take part	> 25%	15–25%	< 15%
Referred directly to a service^b	% of participants randomised to intervention arm referred to specified services Measured at 26 weeks	> 30%	10–30%	< 10%
Attendance at referrals^c*	% of referrals which resulted in self-reported attendance at the service at least once. Measured at 26 weeks	> 50%	30–50%	< 30%
Action		If ALL criteria are GREEN, proceed to full trial with protocol unchanged	If ANY of these criteria are AMBER, adapt protocol appropriately using information from the process evaluation before proceeding to full trial	If ALL of these criteria are RED, consider whether current protocol is not feasible If ONE OR TWO of these criteria are RED, consider whether adaptations are needed

^aA recent study of low-paid government workers receiving an NHS Health Check in the workplace demonstrated benefits to cardiovascular health with 20% uptake of the intervention [60] and experience from a primary care COPD screening trial with > 35% uptake [61] and primary care cohort with > 25% uptake [62]. ^bA feasibility study of a cardiovascular health check in an NHS hospital showed that 33% required follow-up with a GP or other health professionals [63]; experience from our pilot clinic with cardiovascular and mental health checks showed that 35% required further follow-up. ^cThe feasibility study mentioned above also showed that 54% of those referred to further services had attended within 5 weeks, and most of the remainder intended to do so [63]. *We will present both % of referred participants attending at least one of their referrals (at least once) and % of total referrals resulting in an attendance

ISSN: 2055-5784