View clinical trials related to Patient Empowerment.
Filter by:The trial is to assess the impact of two patient partnership tools: (1) a one-page 'visit prep guide' given to relevant patients by clinic staff before seeing the provider, with the intention to improve communication and shared decision-making; and (2) a series of short educational videos that clinic staff can encourage patients to watch.
Lung cancer screening of active or former heavy smokers with yearly low-dose CT allows for earlier diagnosis and better lung cancer survival. Risk of developing lung cancer is higher among family members and close contacts of lung cancer patients, because of shared genetics, environment and life habits like smoking. The investigators want to engage lung cancer patients to refer their family members and close contacts for lung cancer screening, and evaluate if this referred population have higher risk of lung cancer than the population referred by their family doctors.
This study will involve the development, distribution, and evaluation of "period kits" for pre-menarchal adolescents with intellectual and cognitive disabilities (IDD) (e.g., autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome) in relieving stress and augmenting sense of preparedness regarding imminent pubertal changes.
As part of the EFRO (Europees Fonds Regionale Ontwikkeling) 1302 project "Digital Care Support in Practice with Limburg as a Stepping Stone for Flanders", this study aims to evaluate the concept and added value of visualising a personal digital care pathway for patients with type 2 diabetes. Firstly, this chronological visualisation of data strives to improve patient experience and empowerment by offering educational articles and personal medical data relevant to their care path in one place. This way, patients will have more insight in the pathogenesis, treatments, complications and goals, allowing the patients to optimize their selfcare and become confident in dealing with their chronic condition. From time to time, patients will also be asked to complete questionnaires concerning their experiences (PREM) to aid healthcare professionals in personalizing treatment goals. Secondly, the healthcare providers and caregivers surrounding the patient will also have access to the same data, allowing for a more personal approach as well as means to communicate with other members of the care team.
One of the most challenging issues in modern medicine is the current opioid epidemic. Given the association between opioid use after surgery and the development of opioid addiction, an essential goal of the medical community should be to develop strategies aimed at instructing the safe use of opioids. In addition, instructions on how to use non-opioid painkillers and exercises and techniques to better cope with pain can be used to reduce the patients opioid requirements after surgery. This study aims to evaluate the effect of providing an online educational video presentation to patients prior to surgery. This will be a 30 minute video which will provide the study participants with instructions on how best to use their opioid and non-opioid medication for pain and also teach the study participants exercises and techniques to better cope with their pain. This intervention will be used with a view to reduce the amount of opioids used by patients following hip or knee replacement surgery. Participants will be followed during their immediate phase after surgery to determine how much pain killers the participants have used and at six weeks the participants will be asked to return their unused opioids to see how much the participants have used in total.
The quality of care premature infants receive at home after hospital discharge is critical to their health and well-being. Premature infants require special care, which is why Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) have processes in place to prepare mothers for discharge. However, this experience is very complex for mothers, who often experience high levels of stress, anxiety, sadness and uncertainty. Mothers need knowledge and skills about caring for a premature infant, but they also need to gain confidence, believe in their abilities, and become empowered to participate more actively and confidently in decisions that have to do with their child's health. Several approaches exist to prepare mothers for home-based infant care; in the present study, an intervention focused on empowerment is proposed as a way to strengthen mothers' competence to care for their preterm infants and improve infant health outcomes. The intervention is expected to have adequate acceptability and feasibility, as well as preliminary evidence that it improves mothers' competence to care for their infants and decreases readmissions, emergency department visits, improves weight gain and health outcomes of preterm infants.
Rationale A recent study into the patient perspective of patients with multiple chronic conditions in the Netherlands underlines the strain multimorbidity can put on people. Most patients would appreciate more coordination from and communication with their care providers. This call for better coordination of needs and preferences ties into the concept of Advance Care Planning (ACP). ACP is a structured process of communication in which patients and physicians discuss and, if applicable, document health preferences and goals of patients regarding their last phase in life. Most ACP studies have been performed amongst older, terminally ill patients with the main aim of establishing patients' preferences before they lose capacity. We want to investigate the potential of ACP to increase patient empowerment in a population of competent patients with multimorbidity, who are not necessarily in their last phase of life. The distribution of healthcare expenditure among the population requiring care is skewed. In the Netherlands the top-10% most cost incurring patients account for 68% of expenditure. Many of these patients receive unnecessary or ineffective care, with a recent study estimating preventable spending at 10%. High-Need High-Cost patients comprise a very heterogeneous group, yet one common denominator explaining high cost is the high prevalence of multiple chronic conditions. Both overtreatment and conflicting treatment are legitimate concerns within this population. As multimorbidity and frailty increase with age, the older patient with multimorbidity is especially at risk. Targeted care programmes have been developed under the assumption that better coordination will lead to a reduction in healthcare utilization. However, although care might be identified as preventable or inefficient from a medical point of view, this is not necessarily the case from a patient perspective. We are interested how patients experience such care and thereby if better coordination would indeed lead to a reduction in utilization. Because ACP supports patients in timely recognition and better expression of their needs and preferences, we hypothesize that care will address those needs and preferences more adequately, which will result in improved patient assessment of care. We further hypothesize that patient empowerment will enable better planning of care and decision making, which can result in less unwanted or preventable interventions. As a consequence healthcare utilization might decrease. However, another possibility is that rather than leading to a decrease, improved empowerment may lead to an increase in utilization because care which is deemed superfluous from a medical perspective might not be perceived as such by patients. Objective The primary objective of our pilot study is to assess the feasibility of a formal Randomized Controlled Trial. Our secondary pilot objectives are to collect data on patient experience of healthcare, patient engagement, cost-effectiveness, and other data that might inform the design of a full-scale RCT. Study design Randomized pilot study Study population Patients over 65 years of age with polypharmacy, multimorbidity and multiple hospitalizations and/or ER admissions in the past year Intervention One of the most well-researched ACP programmes is the Respecting Choices Programme. In this programme, a trained facilitator encourages patients to reflect on their goals, values and beliefs, to discuss and document their future choices, and to appoint a surrogate decision maker. The programme was translated to the Dutch context in previous studies in the nursing home setting and oncology care. Patients randomized to receive ACP will have two meetings with a trained facilitator within two months. Main study parameters/endpoints Primary: trial-feasibility is defined as the successful inclusion of 50 patients in total, timely administration of the intervention in 25 patients, adherence to follow-up procedures and identification of problems or barriers during recruitment, inclusion, intervention administration and follow-up. Secondary: main outcome for cost-effectiveness is total duration and number of hospital admissions, as a proxy for both costs and effects (iMCQ). In order to inform a future cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), data on health-related quality of life (EQ5D-5L) will also be collected. Our outcomes for patient assessment of care and patient empowerment are the PACIC questionnaire, the ACP Engagement Survey and the appointment of a surrogate decision maker and/or the documentation of advance directives.
Monocentric, uncontrolled before / after study to evaluate the effectiveness of a patient education for oncological patients by nursing staff to promote self-management in pain therapy. The structured patient education (in the form of a micro-training) is intended to specifically promote pain self-management in oncological patients. In contrast to conventional training courses, this requires the patient to be actively involved in the process so that the skills learned can be used to optimally adapt the therapy on an individual level. Through the intervention, we postulate the advantage that the increased self-management of pain therapy improves the everyday functions of the patient, and by breaking down patient-related barriers and checking the accessibility of pain medication, the safety in dealing with pain therapy and thus patient satisfaction increases. Data is collected in two time series. First, data of patients with sham intervention (control intervention) is collected, then data is collected from patients with a structured micro-training (study intervention). Patients do not know which training series they belong to.
After surgery for rectal cancer, many people undergo changes in bowel habits, which may include the need to empty their bowels more often, accidental leakage of stool or gas, the sudden urge to go to the bathroom, and more. The term "Low Anterior Resection Syndrome" or LARS is used to describe these symptoms. LARS has a negative impact on one's quality of life, and can lead to frustration, as there is no single intervention that has proven to be effective for LARS, and each patient has to undergo trial and error to find one's solution. As people struggle with LARS, they describe feeling hopeless and isolated. Peer support is a supportive relationship between individuals who share common experiences or face similar challenges. The goal of our study is to evaluate whether use of an online peer support application with trained mentors who themselves have lived or are living with LARS will empower patients to better manage their LARS symptoms and improve their quality of life.
For patients with certain types of bladder cancer, the removal of the bladder and the construction of an artificial bladder or reservoir are the only treatment options. Both before and after treatment, patients and caregivers face profound challenges preparing for surgery and planning for tasks during their recovery. To aid in recovery and enhance quality of life this program of research will develop and evaluate a multi-stage intervention geared towards patients and their caregivers. Part 1 of this program will have a nurse or trained health professional prepare both patients and their caregivers before treatment about the upcoming surgery. During this time the nurse will also demonstrate the necessary tools and techniques for stoma care. In addition, patients and their caregivers will receive access to a recovery website, specifically designed for bladder cancer patients to be used as a resource for after treatment. The website will be part 2 of this research and will contain important recovery information, videos about post-surgical care, testimonials by other patients and physicians and a variety of other resources. Patients and caregivers in the control group will receive the Facing Forward brochures from the National Cancer Institute in part 2. This research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute and will be the first study to address the needs of bladder cancer patients and their caregivers. The ultimate goal of the study is to reduce infections and unplanned nurse/ER visits and improve quality of life for both patients and their caregivers. This new program will be evaluated over the course of 12-months and if found successful, has the potential to be disseminated throughout the health care systems of the two study sites.