MedTrace Logo

A Multicenter Implementation Study of the 3 Wishes Project

NCT04147169 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 730

Last updated 2019-11-04

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The 3 Wishes Project (3WP) was created to promote the connections between patients, family members, and clinicians that are foundational to empathic end-of-life care. It provides a scaffold for discussions about preferences and values at the end of life and leads to acts of compassion that arise from soliciting and implementing wishes that honour the dying patient. In a single center, investigators previously reported how the 3 Wishes Project forges interpersonal connections among patients, family members and clinicians, eases family grief, and offers experiential end of life education for clinicians-in-training.

The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the 3 Wishes Project could enhance compassionate care for dying patients and their families when implemented as a multicenter program. Given the importance of empowering frontline staff to adapt the 3WP to their own practice patterns, investigators did not protocolize this approach to personalizing end-of-life care. Investigators conceptualized this study as a formative evaluation of 3WP to examine its 1) Value: as experienced by family members, frontline clinicians, ICU managers and hospital administrators; 2) Transferability: successful implementation beyond the original ICU by a different mix of clinicians; 3) Affordability: cost of wishes being less than $50/patient; 4) Sustainability: project continuation beyond the first year of evaluation.

Conditions

  • Death
  • Communication, Multidisciplinary
  • Empathy
  • Compassion
  • Family Members
  • Bereavement
  • Empowerment
  • Patient Engagement

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Focused end-of-life conversations to promote connections among patients, family members and clinicians.

All eligible patients and families who were invited to participate in wish elicitation and implementation. For family interviews, criterion sampling was used. For the clinician focus groups, criterion sampling was used, based on involvement in the care of a 3WP patient. For the manager/hospital administrator interviews, purposive sampling was used, based on relevant leadership positions. Investigators employed qualitative and quantitative methods to collect and analyze data. Quantitative data include characteristics of patients, families and clinicians, questionnaire responses from families who agree to interviews, and clinicians who agree to focus groups, respectively, types of wishes elicited and implemented, and their cost. Qualitative data was obtained through individual family interviews, inter-professional clinician focus groups, project team field notes, additional ideas about the costs and benefits of the project from manager interviews, and analysis of project documents.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2016-04-27
Primary Completion
2018-12-31
Completion
2019-04-12

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Companies

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 NCT04147169 on ClinicalTrials.gov