Decision Process About the Location of Care Among Frail Elderly Clinical Trial
— DOLCEOfficial title:
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.
| Status | Completed |
| Enrollment | 455 |
| Est. completion date | August 2016 |
| Est. primary completion date | August 2016 |
| Accepts healthy volunteers | No |
| Gender | Both |
| Age group | 65 Years and older |
| Eligibility |
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 |
Allocation: Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Single Blind (Subject), Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
| Country | Name | City | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | CHU de Québec | Quebec |
| Lead Sponsor | Collaborator |
|---|---|
| Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec, CHU de Québec | Agence de la santé et des services sociaux, Ministere de la Sante et des Services Sociaux, TVN 2013 Core Research Grant Program |
Canada,
| Type | Measure | Description | Time frame | Safety issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | The assumed role in the decision making process, and the preferred and chosen options. | 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 | No |