9 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
This study will test the feasibility and acceptability of deploying a decision aid for surrogate decision makers of comatose survivors of cardiac arrest early during hospitalization. This decision aid is to inform, educate and support decision makers charged with determining goals of care during post-cardiac arrest treatment.
The trial is testing an investigator-developed decision support tool for surrogate decision makers for stroke patients that are unable to make medical decisions for themselves. A historical usual care control group will be enrolled during tool development. The tool will then be tested in surrogates of hospitalized stroke patients.
Intensive Care Units (ICU) are stressful places where life-and-death medical decisions are made and patients' surrogate decision-makers are exposed to potentially traumatic experiences. As the number of life-prolonging procedures administered to the patient rises, the patient's quality of life falls. Thus, interventions to improve the quality of life and care of ICU patients are needed. EMPOWER is a cognitive-behavioral, acceptance-based intervention for patient surrogate decision-makers to reduce experiential avoidance of unpleasant thoughts and feelings related to thinking about patient death. By reducing surrogate's experiential avoidance, EMPOWER removes a barrier to advance care planning. EMPOWER aims to improve patient quality of life through enhancing value-directed end-of-life care while also empowering surrogates to cope with a loved one's potential impending death and adjust following the patient's ICU death or discharge. Specifically, investigators aim to: * 1: Develop EMPOWER for surrogate decision-makers of critically ill patients who are at risk of becoming incapacitated or are currently unable to communicate in the ICU. Key informants, including bereaved ICU patient caregivers and clinicians, will be asked to evaluate the EMPOWER intervention manual to increase its potential tolerability, acceptability and efficacy. * 2: Determine feasibility, tolerability, acceptability, and preliminary effects of EMPOWER on surrogate mental health. * 3: Estimate the effects of EMPOWER on patient outcomes in the months following the ICU admission. Hypothesis 1: Surrogate decision-makers who receive EMPOWER will have significantly lower levels of peritraumatic distress when compared to usual care condition at post intervention assessment (T2). Hypothesis 2: Patients whose surrogates receive EMPOWER will have more value-concordant care, better quality of life, and better quality of death. EMPOWER was first evaluated though a single site open trial (n=10). All 10 participants in the open trial phase received EMPOWER. Feedback from clinicians, bereaved stakeholders and results from the open trial were then used to refine the intervention and launch a multi-center randomized controlled trial to examine clinical superiority of EMPOWER to enhanced usual care. In order to adapt to restrictions in ICU visitation and meet the needs of family caregivers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we then launched a second single arm open trial and paused recruitment for the RCT. All participants recruited during the open trial COVID-19 phase received EMPOWER. Beginning in August 2021, we resumed the RCT portion of the trial to meet the initial recruitment goals of the study (total n of RCT \& COVID-19 open trial=60).
Each year, millions of Americans are admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU). For more than half of them, ICU admission initiates a cascade of decisions about treatment and end-of-life care.This is particularly the case for patients with chronic critical illness, a life-limiting syndrome. Most (74%-82%) ICU patients who require mechanical ventilation have transient or persistent cognitive impairment that precludes them from making their own healthcare decisions. Among ICU patients, the chronically critically ill (CCI) are at highest risk for cognitive impairment and thus require a surrogate decision maker (SDM), usually a family member. SDMs for the critically ill often describe high states of psychological stress associated with the uncertainty of the patient's condition and their decision making role. The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of two decision support interventions for end-of-life care delivered to SDMs of CCI patients. This will be the first study to test interventions tailored to the unique needs of the SDMs of CCI patients delivered using an interactive avatar based format.
Research Protocol Abstract: This is a phase II controlled trial (RCT) of a "storytelling" intervention compared to no treatment among surrogates who have participated in a decision to limit life-sustaining treatment in the ICU for an incapacitated loved one. Subjects will be sequentially assigned to "storytelling" (a facilitated elicitation of the experience 2-4 weeks after bereavement) or no treatment with follow up "monitoring of well-being". Subjects will receive print bereavement brochures at 1 week, and undergo telephone symptom assessment at 2-weeks, 3-months, and 6-months after bereavement.
Deciding about prolonged life support for critically ill patients can be very difficult. Therefore, the investigators are doing a study to see if an internet-based decision aid can improve the quality of decision making for substitute decision makers of patients who are in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Difficulties enrolling patients in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have long been recognized as a major barrier to successful evaluation of medical interventions. This is particularly problematic among intensive care unit (ICU) trials, of which more than one-third do not reach target enrollment. Under-enrollment and selective enrollment reduce RCTs' abilities to answer the research questions, thereby degrading the trials' scientific value and ethics. Current evidence suggests that financial incentives can ethically increase study enrollment, but this approach can pose large up-front costs to researchers. However, several nonmonetary behavioral interventions, or nudges, may offer novel and easily scalable approaches to increase enrollment in RCTs. The investigation team propose a 2-arm RCT in 10 ICUs at Penn to test the relative effectiveness of nudges on enrollment rates. Investigators hypothesize that a bundle of nudges during recruitment will increase enrollment rates compared to usual recruitment procedures will increase enrollment. Investigators will enroll 182 critically ill patients' surrogate decision makers(participants) to engage in recruitment procedures for a simulated RCT comparing two mechanical ventilation weaning protocols among mechanically ventilated patients. Investigators will also measure participants' assessment of risk of the simulated trial after the informed consent process. This work will provide the first empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of inexpensive, scalable nudges to potentially augment enrollment and reduce costs of future clinical trials.
To test the efficacy of FACE-TC on key outcomes, the investigators propose using an intent-to-treat, longitudinal, prospective, multi-site, randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. Adolescents with cancer, aged 14 up to 20 years, and their families (N=130 dyads; N=260 participants) will be recruited and randomized to FACE-TC or Treatment as Usual (TAU) control. Participants will complete standardized questionnaires at baseline and 3, 6, 12, and 18 months post-intervention. Our goal is to assess the extent to which FACE-TC helps adolescents and young adults with cancer and their families: (1) reach and maintain better congruence in treatment preferences over time; (2) improve their quality of life; and (3) document goals of care and advance directives earlier in the course of their potentially life limiting illness.
The overarching goal of the project is to improve the process and experience of surrogate decision-making by family caregivers. Since feeling unprepared to make surrogate decisions is a major contributor to caregiver stress, the primary outcome is caregiver self-efficacy --i.e., caregivers' assessment of how well prepared they feel to serve effectively as a surrogate decision-maker. Through follow-on Renewal funding, we are now also qualitatively examining family caregivers' experience with surrogate decision-making.