Increasing Family Engagement in Critical Care (NGAGE)

May 14, 2025 updated by: Michael Goldfarb, Lady Davis Institute

Increasing Family Engagement in Critical Care: The NGAGE Trial (The NGAGE Trial)

The primary aim of this trial is to evaluate if the NGAGE tool improves care engagement in family members of ICU patients. The secondary objectives are to assess if the NGAGE tool improves communication, care satisfaction, psychological symptoms, and quality of life in family members of ICU patients.

The NGAGE trial is a stepped wedge cluster randomized trial of 6 Canadian adult ICUs, involving 194 family members. A family member will be considered anyone with a biological, emotional, or legal relationship with the patient and whom the patient wishes to be involved in their care. There will be random and sequential crossover of clusters from control (phase 1) to intervention (phase 2) until all clusters are exposed. The intervention group will have access to the NGAGE tool, which has modules to Learn, Engage, and Report. "Engage" allows the family member to indicate their desired engagement activity, which is then transmitted to the treating healthcare team to provide the requested activity. "Learn" contains educational capsules about the ICU environment and information about care participation. "Report" allows the family member to provide real-time feedback to the healthcare team. The primary endpoint is the FAMily Engagement (FAME) score within 1 week of ICU discharge. Secondary endpoints are family-centered outcomes, including communication quality, satisfaction, and mental health (anxiety and depression) scores within 1 week of ICU discharge, and quality of life and mental health (anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic distress symptoms) at 6 months. The mean difference of the validated FAME score, a continuous variable, will be compared between groups.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

194

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 Contact

Study Locations

  • Canada
    • Quebec
      • Montreal, Quebec, Canada
        • Recruiting
        • McGill University Health Centre
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Michael J Goldfarb, MD, MSc
      • Montréal, Quebec, Canada
        • Recruiting
        • Jewish General Hospital
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Michael J Goldfarb, MD, MSc

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

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Adult family members (age ≥ 18 years) of ICU patients
  • Expected ICU stay ≥ 48 hours
  • Able to participate in English or French

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Family members who do not wish to participate in care
  • Repeat admissions within the study period
  • Another family member has already participated in the study

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: Crossover Assignment
  • Masking: Double

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control Group: Usual Care
Participants in the control group will not receive access to the NGAGE tool. Participants will be able to engage in care as per current family engagement practices at each site.
Experimental: Intervention Group: Access to NGAGE Tool
Participants in the intervention group will be provided access to the NGAGE tool.
Other: NGAGE tool
Access to NGAGE tool

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
FAMily Engagement (FAME) score within 1 week of ICU discharge
Time Frame: 1-week post-hospital discharge
The FAMily Engagement (FAME) tool is a self-administered 12-item questionnaire that assesses an individual's current engagement practice. FAME uses a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), and scale results are changed to a 0-100 scoring system, with higher scores indicating greater engagement in care. The following subdomains are evaluated: engagement perception, family presence, communication, education, decision-making, care contribution, and family needs. FAME includes the following engagement domains: family presence, family needs, communication and education, decision making, and direct care. FAME also captures the following family-centered care principles: dignity and respect, information sharing, participation, and collaboration.
1-week post-hospital discharge

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Quality of communication (QOC score)
Time Frame: 1-week post-hospital discharge
The Quality of Communication tool is a 13-item questionnaire that was developed and validated in an ICU setting to measure the perceived quality of communication. Scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better clinician-family communication.
1-week post-hospital discharge
Anxiety and depression (HADS)
Time Frame: 6 months post-hospital discharge
The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is a simple to use, validated, and widely used self-reported tool to measure anxiety and depression in medical patients. The survey is composed of 14 questions: 7 depression-related and 7 anxiety-related questions. The score for each item ranges from 0 to 3, and subscale scores greater than 8 denotes anxiety or depression.
6 months post-hospital discharge
Anxiety and depression (HADS)
Time Frame: 1-week post-hospital discharge
The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is a simple to use, validated, and widely used self-reported tool to measure anxiety and depression in medical patients. The survey is composed of 14 questions: 7 depression-related and 7 anxiety-related questions. The score for each item ranges from 0 to 3, and subscale scores greater than 8 denotes anxiety or depression.
1-week post-hospital discharge
Post-traumatic stress (IES-Revised)
Time Frame: 6 months post-hospital discharge
The IES-Revised is a 22-item questionnaire that has been validated and is widely used for measuring post-traumatic stress symptoms and yields a total score ranging from 0 to 88 and subscale scores for the Intrusion, Avoidance, and Hyperarousal subscales. Items are rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely). High scores indicate greater severity of PTSD.
6 months post-hospital discharge
Family satisfaction in the ICU (FS-ICU)
Time Frame: 1-week post-hospital discharge
The Family Satisfaction in the ICU survey (FS-ICU) is a 24-item instrument that was developed and validated to assess family satisfaction and experience with care in the ICU. Scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicate greater satisfaction.
1-week post-hospital discharge
Quality of life (EuroQOL-5D-5L score)
Time Frame: 6 months post-hospital discharge
The EuroQOL-5D-5L is a 5-item questionnaire that has been validated and is widely used for measuring health-related quality of life. Each dimension has five response levels: no problems (Level 1); slight; moderate; severe; and extreme problems (Level 5). The scores are combined to generate a single index value for overall health status. EQ-5D-5L index scores range from -0.59 to 1, where 1 is the best possible health state
6 months post-hospital discharge

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Sponsor

Lady Davis Institute

Collaborators

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Michael J Goldfarb, MD, MSc, Lady Davis Institute, McGill University, Jewish General Hospital

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 (Actual)

March 26, 2025

Primary Completion (Estimated)

July 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

September 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 4, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 4, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

September 19, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 18, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 14, 2025

Last Verified

May 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2025-4301

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

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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