NCT06376188

Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication

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

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 46 (actual)
• Sponsor: Medical University of Vienna · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 75 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

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

Detailed 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.

Conditions

• Communication
• End of Life
• Pediatric ALL

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
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)

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-09-01
• Primary completion: 2022-08-31
• Completion: 2022-09-30
• First posted: 2024-04-19
• Last updated: 2024-04-19

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Austria