NCT04673760

The PROAKTIV Study

Palliative Needs Assessment and Palliative Care in Primary Care: The PROAKTIV Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 149 (actual)
• Sponsor: Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The overall objective of this study is to identify whether the systematic anticipation of highly structured specialized palliative home care into primary care influences the quality of care and care utilization. Quality of care focusses on the sense of security of patients and family caregivers, satisfaction with care of patients, family caregivers, general practitioners, home care nurses and specialized palliative care nurses, and availability and access to advanced directives. Health care utilization focus on the number of hospitalizations and the length of hospital stays.

Detailed description

The University Center for Palliative Care from the Inselspital Bern conducts this monocentric mixed-methods controlled study and is responsible for informed consent. Data consists of questionnaires of patients, their family caregivers, general practitioners, home care nurses and if involved specialized palliative home care nurses. Patients and their family caregivers will fill out baseline questionnaires and follow-up questionnaires at 2, 8, 16 and 24 weeks. Patient follow-up will end if the patient dies or the study ends. Family caregivers will be asked to fill out a questionnaire two months after the patient's death. General practitioners, home care nurses and specialised palliative home care nurses will fill out questionnaires after the patient's death or at the end of the study. Patient survival data will be collected from administrative health data after the end of the study. Additionally, a nested qualitative study with semi-structured qualitative interviews with patients, family caregivers and care providers will provide an in-depth understanding of preferences, needs, experiences from this phase of life.

Conditions

• Palliative Care

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Specialized palliative home care	Specialist palliative home care teams will initiate care as usual, including managing a systematic and collaborative process of advance care planning with patients, family caregivers, GPs and SPITEX nurses using the "Betreuungsplan", information packages and regular case meetings. The GP was additionally provided with educational palliative care information by the study team.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-09-07
• Primary completion: 2022-04-10
• Completion: 2023-08-01
• First posted: 2020-12-17
• Last updated: 2023-11-29

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland