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Preserving Compassionate End of Life Care in the Pandemic

NCT04602520 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 118

Last updated 2023-03-16

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Compassionate and humanistic care for patients dying in the hospital has been especially challenging during the pandemic. Family presence is restricted, maximal barrier precautions are advised, and personal protective equipment must be preserved. This research examines the impact of adaptations to compassionate approaches to end of life care in a single center.

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. It is partnered with the Footprints Project, which is an initiative encouraging staff to learn more about each patient. In a previous multi-center evaluation, the authors reported how the 3 Wishes Project is valuable, transferable, affordable and sustainable. During the pandemic, end of life care, facilitated by the 3 Wishes Project and Footprints Project, will be adapted to accommodate reduced family visiting and requirements to preserve PPE.

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether the adapted 3 Wishes Project continues to be feasible and valuable during the pandemic, and determine how it influences the experiences of clinicians caring for patients dying during the pandemic.

Conditions

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

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

3 Wishes Project

Behavioral: Focused conversations at end-of-life to promote the connections between patients, family members, and clinicians.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

    collaborator OTHER_GOV

  • McMaster University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Deborah Cook, MD MSc · St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-03-16
Primary Completion
2021-06-01
Completion
2021-08-01

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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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 NCT04602520 on ClinicalTrials.gov