Living With Hope Program for Rural Women Caregivers

NCT01081301 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: PHASE2 · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 36

Last updated 2014-07-23

Study results available
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Summary

Family caregivers of terminally ill persons describe hope as inner strength that will help them continue caregiving. Our research team has developed and pilot tested a Living with Hope Program (LWHP) for caregivers of family members with advanced cancer, with the goal of fostering hope and improving quality of life (www.usask.ca/nursing /research/livingwithhope). The caregivers involved in our pilot test found the LWHP easy to use and we found some evidence to suggest that the program may have increased their hope and improved their quality of life. We would like to further develop and test the LWHP by finding out more about how and how long it might work. We believe it will improve the quality of life of active and bereaved older rural women of persons with advanced cancer and may decrease the number of prescriptions and doctor visits over one year. Since rural women caring for persons with advanced cancer seem to have the least hope, we want to focus on them first before including other caregivers in our research. Two hundred rural women caring for a person with advanced cancer will be asked to take part in this study. Their feelings of control, loss and grief, quality of life and hope will be measured over a year. The numbers of time they visit their physician and how many prescriptions they have over the year will also be collected. This study will contribute to the refinement of a Living with Hope Program that may improve quality of life and personal health of older rural women caring for their spouse with advanced cancer and those who subsequently become bereaved.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Living with Hope Program

The LWHP consists of the LWH film featuring caregivers of patients with advanced cancer describing their hope and a hope activity "Stories of the Present". Following viewing of the video with trained research assistants (RAs), (without discussion) the RA's will instruct the subjects to take 5 minutes at the end of the day and write about their thoughts, challenges and what gave them hope over a 2 week time period. Subjects can choose to use a journal, a computer or audiotape their journals.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Saskatchewan

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Wendy D Duggleby, PhD · University of Alberta

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
FEMALE
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2009-01-31
Primary Completion
2012-03-31
Completion
2012-03-31

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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Entities

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT01081301 on ClinicalTrials.gov