Improving Decision Making On Location of Care With the Frail Elderly and Their Caregivers (DOLCE)

August 24, 2016 updated by: France Legare, CHU de Quebec-Universite Laval

Improving the Decision Making Process About Location of Care With the Frail Elderly and Their Caregivers

One of the toughest decisions faced by the frail elderly in Canada is whether to stay at home or move to a care facility. It is certainly difficult to make this decision alone, but can be even harder if someone else makes it for you. Shared decision making is when, instead of making decisions for the patient, healthcare professionals share information about what the evidence says, and they talk about what's important with the patient, and then make the decision together. In the case of the frail elderly in home care services, there are many health care professionals involved, e.g. the doctor, nurse and social worker. In this case decisions should be shared by all the professionals involved with the elderly person along with his or her caregivers. Unfortunately, in this context, shared decision making rarely occurs.

We have designed a training program that teaches interprofessional teams how to share decisions with their frail elderly patients, and tested it in one Quebec City and one Edmonton home care team. This project tests the training program on a broader scale with 16 home care teams attached to community health centres across the province of Quebec, and will compare the results with what happens when no one has completed the training (usual care). Home care is a rapidly growing sector and this study will lay the foundations for a national strategy to ensure that no one has to make this difficult decision alone.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

455

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Canada
      • Quebec, Canada, G1L 3L5
        • CHU de Québec

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

65 years and older (Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Receiving care from the home care team
  • Faced the decision about whether to stay at home or move to a care facility in the previous 3 to 6 months
  • Able to read, understand and write french or english
  • Able to give informed consent
  • For the case of clients unable to provide informed consent, their caregivers who was involved into decision making process will be eligible

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Clients who cannot provide informed consent (e. g. clients with cognitive impairment) without a caregiver
  • Clients who require acute care hospitalization and whom the location of care decision is transferred to hospital-based social services

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Training
Online tutorial, decision aid and interactive workshop
Behavioral: Training
Other: Usual care
Behavioral: Usual care

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
The assumed role in the decision making process, and the preferred and chosen options.
Time Frame: 3 to 6 months
We will use the modified version of the Control Preferences Scale designed to assess the assumed role in the decision making process reported by the client.
3 to 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

CHU de Quebec-Universite Laval

Collaborators

Ministere de la Sante et des Services Sociaux
TVN 2013 Core Research Grant Program
Health and Social Services Agency, Montreal

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: France Légaré, MD, PhD, CHUQ Research Center

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

September 1, 2014

Primary Completion (Actual)

August 1, 2016

Study Completion (Actual)

August 1, 2016

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 17, 2014

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 18, 2014

First Posted (Estimate)

September 19, 2014

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

August 25, 2016

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 24, 2016

Last Verified

August 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • CORE 2013-56

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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