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Time Limited Trials to Reduce Non-Beneficial Intensive Care Unit Treatments

NCT04181294 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 209

Last updated 2025-11-21

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Overutilization of intensive care unit (ICU) treatments among patients with advanced medical illnesses and poor prognosis places them at risk for prolonged suffering with minimal anticipated benefit. Improving communication and shared decision-making between providers and patients/family members represents an opportunity to reduce potentially non-beneficial treatments. Time limited trials (TLTs) are agreements between clinicians and patients/surrogate decision-makers to use medical therapies over a defined period of time to observe if patients improve or deteriorate according to agreed-upon clinical outcomes. The objective of this project is to examine whether a quality improvement intervention that uses protocoled time limited trials as the default ICU communication/care planning strategy for patients with advanced medical illnesses will decrease the duration and intensity of non-beneficial ICU treatments without changing hospital mortality.

Conditions

  • Critical Illness
  • Communication

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Family meetings using time limited trials as default ICU communication and care planning approach

Providers will be trained using didactics, focus groups, and simulations using actors as family members. A TLT protocol and checklist will be used to facilitate family meetings. A coordinator will schedule family meetings. Routine feedback sessions will be held with the local champions.

BEHAVIORAL

Usual practice

Baseline practice of ICU communication and care planning

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Los Angeles Department of Health Services

    collaborator UNKNOWN

  • University of California, Los Angeles

    collaborator OTHER

  • Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Model
SEQUENTIAL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2017-08-01
Primary Completion
2019-12-23
Completion
2019-12-31

Countries

  • United States

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 NCT04181294 on ClinicalTrials.gov