Improving Patient and Family Centered Care in Advanced Critical Illness

Summary

One in five deaths in the U.S. occurs in or shortly after discharge from an intensive care unit (ICU), typically following decisions made by surrogate decision makers to forego life prolonging treatment. A large body of empirical research has identified deficiencies in care processes that contribute to three important problems: 1) family members often experience poor quality communication with ICU clinicians, leading to lasting psychological distress associated with the ICU experience; 2) patients near the end of life frequently receive invasive, expensive treatment that is inconsistent with their values and preferences, and 3) end-of-life care is a major contributor to health care costs.\[8, 9\] Although advance care planning can prevent some unwanted treatment, many patients wish for a trial of intensive treatment when the prognosis is uncertain, and therefore it seems likely that the need for interventions to improve "in-the-moment" decisions by surrogates will persist.\[10, 11\]

In a pilot project, the investigators developed the PARTNER intervention (PAiring Re-engineered ICU Teams with Nurse-driven Emotional Support and Relationship-building), an interdisciplinary intervention that 1) gives new responsibilities and advanced communication skills training to existing ICU staff (local nurse leaders and social work members of the ICU team); 2) changes care "defaults" to ensure frequent clinician-family meetings; and 3) adds protocolized, nurse-administered coaching and emotional support of surrogates before and during clinician-family meetings. The objective of this proposal is to conduct a stepped wedge randomized controlled trial testing the PARTNER intervention in 5 ICUs among 1000 patients with advanced critical illness and their surrogates.

Conditions

• Anxiety
• Depression

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

The PARTNER Intervention

The PARTNER intervention (PAiring Re-engineered ICU Teams with Nurse-driven Emotional Support and Relationship-building) consists of: 1) institution of a clinical pathway for family support overseen by ICU staff nurses; 2) advanced communication skills training for ICU staff nurses; 3) a multifaceted strategy to support implementation of the clinical pathway for family support.

OTHER

ICU Usual Care Control

The control group will receive usual care, in which the frequency and content of clinician-family communication is determined by the clinical team according to their usual practice. No study ICU has a protocolized approach to family communication and instead clinicians determine the timing and frequency of communication with families. All sites have palliative care services.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Pittsburgh

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Douglas B. White, MD,MAS · University of Pittsburgh

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-07-23

Primary Completion

2016-02-18

Completion

2016-02-18

Countries

• United States

Study Locations