Family meetings for hospitalized palliative care patients: Benefits and resource implications

For family carers of hospitalised palliative care patients, does a Structured Family Meeting shortly after admission to palliative care, compared to standard care only, improve psychological distress?

Status

Recruiting

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Interventional

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12615000200583

Enrollment

210

Registered

2015-03-02

Start date

2015-02-16

Completion date

2016-12-19

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

Family meetings are recommended as standard practice, as a way for health professionals, together with family members and patients (where able) to discuss goals of care, site of care options, psychosocial issues, and plans for the future. However, family meetings do not occur consistently and are rarely conducted according to best available evidence. This research project aims to determine whether conducting a structured family meeting on admission to palliative care improves outcomes for patients and family members. This project also aims to determine the cost and resource implications of implementing family meetings into routine care. This research is significant because it will provide important evidence about what is optimal care for patients receiving palliative care and their family members. Further, it will provide information on the cost and resource implications of implementing family meetings into routine care. It is hoped that clinical practice will be improved as a result of this project.

Interventions

A structured family meeting which is a meeting with key members of the family and key members of the health care team to discuss prognosis, plan care and address concerns of the family members. One structured family meeting will be conducted shortly following admission to palliative care (for the intervention group). The meeting will be held at the hospital and be approximately one hour in duration.

Study design

Allocation

Non-randomised trial

Intervention model

Other

Primary purpose

Educational / counselling / training

Masking

Open (masking not used)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

18 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

Family members of hospitalised patients with advanced, non-curable disease referred to a specialist palliative care in-patient unit or palliative care consultancy service for inpatients who have been nominated by a patient as their primary support person and willing to attend a Structured Family Meeting if allocated to the intervention arm.

Exclusion criteria

Under 18; unable to understand English; unable to provide informed consent due to cognitive impairment; or not agreeable to being considered the primary family carer. A family carer of a patient who is imminently dying (unlikely to be alive in 7 days).

Outcome results