Patient and Healthcare Professional Reflections on Consenting for Extra Bone Marrow Samples to a Biobank for Research—A Qualitative Study

Little is known about patient perspectives regarding consent for obtaining extra research-specific bone marrow (BM) samples during the diagnostic procedure for acute leukemia (AL). This study aimed to better understand patient experiences with consenting to provide these samples and identify potential areas for practice improvement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients treated for AL, 4-6 years prior to the interviews, and healthcare professionals involved with obtaining patient consent and sample collection. A total of 17 patients (14 agreed to provide a sample and 3 did not have a sample in the biobank) and 5 healthcare professionals were interviewed, achieving data saturation. Patients supported increasing public knowledge about research and noted the importance of friends and family in providing emotional support and retaining information. Despite time pressure and anxiety, the decision to donate a research sample did not require much deliberation. Proximal factors informing decisions included impact on patient health and family and anticipated, procedure-associated pain; distal factors included altruism and trust in healthcare professionals. Key information included expected pain and management, the purpose of research samples, and sample security and privacy. Our findings suggest that BM research sample collection may be facilitated through optimizing the environment where information is provided and the type of information provided, including pain management options and the value of the samples for current and future research.