Contextualizing Care for Patients With a Serious Illness

Summary

When people become seriously ill, healthcare decisions are influenced not only by their medical condition, but also by their personal situation, values, wishes, and daily life circumstances. A medically appropriate treatment may not always fit what is important or realistic for an individual. Contextualised care aims to integrate relevant aspects of a patient's life into care and decision-making.

This study investigates whether an interactive communication training program can help healthcare professionals provide more contextualised care for people with serious illness. The training aims to improve professionals' skills in recognising, exploring, and integrating relevant patient context into clinical decision-making and teamwork.

Healthcare professionals from hospital teams in the Netherlands will participate, including physicians, nurses, nurse specialists, and physician assistants caring for patients with serious illness. The training consists of two three-hour sessions. Participants will practice communication skills using realistic clinical situations and learn how patient context can be incorporated into care planning and communication within the healthcare team.

The effects of the training will be evaluated in several ways. Healthcare professionals will complete questionnaires before and after training to assess competence, communication, and job satisfaction. Responses to simulated patient situations will be analysed to examine how participants recognise and respond to patients' concerns. Medical records will also be reviewed to examine whether non-somatic aspects of care are more often documented, anticipated, and communicated after the training. Hospital-based healthcare use and associated costs will also be assessed.

The study aims to provide insight into whether training hospital teams in contextualised communication can support more personalised, appropriate, and person-centred care for people living with serious illness.

Conditions

• Palliative Care

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Contextualized Care Communication Training

The Contextualized Care Communication Training is an interactive educational intervention designed to strengthen healthcare professionals' ability to integrate relevant patient context into care for people with serious illness. The training is based on the contextual care model and extends the original 4C-process with a fifth step focused on contextual handover within healthcare teams. The training focuses on five steps: (1) recognizing contextual cues that indicate potentially relevant patient circumstances, (2) exploring these cues through patient-centred communication, (3) identifying contextual factors that are relevant for care decisions, (4) integrating relevant contextual information into care planning, and (5) handing over contextual information within the multidisciplinary team to support continuity of care. The intervention consists of two interactive 3-hour training sessions delivered to existing hospital teams. The first session focuses on individual communication skills,

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Radboud University Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Yvonne Engels · Radboud University Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-07-01

Primary Completion

2026-03-31

Completion

2026-03-31

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations