Communication, End of Life, Pediatric ALL
Conditions
Keywords
communication, pediatrics, palliative care, simulation, resuscitation, breaking bad news
Brief summary
Breaking bad news, especially a death notice, is an essential part of the medical profes-sional communication. Being inadequately trained in those skills this may result in un-pleasant psychosocial consequences for everyone involved. This prospective, single-center, randomized controlled trial evaluated the delivery of a death notice to simulation parents out of the perspective of these parents (professional actors), the participants (students) and by video analysis. The simulation patient has prior unexpectedly died during a simulated resuscitation. The intervention group broke the bad news after receiving a short communication
Detailed description
Conversations about death and dying present discomfort for both healthcare professionals, patients and their families. These conversations, emotionally laden, pose lasting challenges and impact decision-making. Despite extensive medical training, physicians often lack adequate communication skills for such conversations, leading to frustration and distress. Delivering bad news, particularly in pediatrics, requires managing not only medical intricacies but also emotional impact. Communication skills, crucial for such scenarios, are typically developed over time through observation and practice, yet are often inadequately emphasized in medical training. Our study aimed to assess the impact of communication training on medical students delivering death notifications to simulation parents in pediatric simulation scenarios.
Interventions
The intervention group received a communication training session prior to the prebriefing and familiarization of the scenario, including advice on how to improve communication skills as well as how to create an optimal setting for difficult medical conversations. This communication training session has been created on the basis of an in-depth literature research.(Brock et al., 2019; Chumpitazi et al., 2016; Collins et al., 2018; Grant et al., 2016; Tobler et al., 2014; Vaidya et al., 1999; Yuan et al., 2019)
Sponsors
Medical University of Vienna
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
DOUBLE (Subject, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 75 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Medical students, enrolled at the Medical University of Vienna. * Successful completion the mandatory basic life support training Block 16 in the third year of medical training and * Successful completion of the mandatory communication seminar Ärztliche Gesprächsführung B also in the third year of medical training. * Obtained written informed consent.
Exclusion criteria
* quality of the obtained video recordings were unsatisfactory and not usable for analysis * unmet inclusion criteria
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| score by simulation parents | up to 1 hour after the simulation | evaluation of breaking bad news by simulation parents, via a newly created questionnaire, measured in points, minimum score of zero points, maximum score of 69 points, the higher the score the better the outcome |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| score by participants | up to 1 hour after the simulation | self-evaluation of breaking bad news by participants, via a newly created questionnaire, measured in points, minimum score of zero points, maximum score of 63 points, the higher the score the better the outcome |
| score of video analysis | through study completion, an average of 1 year | evaluation of breaking bad news by video raters, via a newly created questionnaire, measured in points, minimum score of zero points, maximum score of 270 points, the higher the score the better the outcome |
Countries
Austria
Outcome results
None listed