Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication

Communication Clinical Trial

— SimCom  

Official title:

Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication: The Prospective Randomized Controlled SimCom Study

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT06376188
• Other study ID #: 1582/2021 SimCom
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 1, 2021
• Est. completion date: September 30, 2022

Study information

• Verified date: April 2024
• Source: Medical University of Vienna
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial 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

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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 46
• Est. completion date: September 30, 2022
• Est. primary completion date: August 31, 2022
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 75 Years

Eligibility

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

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Communication
• Death
• End of Life
• Pediatric ALL

Intervention

Other:
• communication training
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)

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Austria	Medical University of Vienna	Vienna

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Medical University of Vienna

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Austria, 

References & Publications (5)

Babu TA. Breaking bad news in the paediatric ICU: need for ethical practice. Indian J Med Ethics. 2013 Oct-Dec;10(4):278-9. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2013.085. No abstract available. — View Citation

Bittner-Fagan H, Davis J, Savoy M. Improving Patient Safety: Improving Communication. FP Essent. 2017 Dec;463:27-33. — View Citation

Brock KE, Tracewski M, Allen KE, Klick J, Petrillo T, Hebbar KB. Simulation-Based Palliative Care Communication for Pediatric Critical Care Fellows. Am J Hosp Palliat Care. 2019 Sep;36(9):820-830. doi: 10.1177/1049909119839983. Epub 2019 Apr 11. — View Citation

Chumpitazi CE, Rees CA, Chumpitazi BP, Hsu DC, Doughty CB, Lorin MI. Creation and Assessment of a Bad News Delivery Simulation Curriculum for Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows. Cureus. 2016 May 1;8(5):e595. doi: 10.7759/cureus.595. — View Citation

de Moura Villela EF, Bastos LK, de Almeida WS, Pereira AO, de Paula Rocha MS, de Oliveira FM, Bollela VR. Effects on Medical Students of Longitudinal Small-Group Learning about Breaking Bad News. Perm J. 2020;24:19.157. doi: 10.7812/TPP/19.157. Epub 2020 Feb 14. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	score by simulation parents	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	up to 1 hour after the simulation
Secondary	score by participants	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	up to 1 hour after the simulation
Secondary	score of video analysis	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	through study completion, an average of 1 year