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34 active trials for Communication

Impact of Digital Communication Assist Tools in Endoscopic Team Communication During COVID-19

Team work is highly challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Necessary protective equipment as FFP-mask and face shields impair communication significantly.Objective of the study is to evalaute the impact of digital enhanced telecommunication in endoscopic procedures.

Start: July 2020

A Communication Tool to Assist Older Adults Facing Dialysis Choices

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of the "Best Case/Worse Case" (BC/WC) communication tool on receipt of palliative care and intensity of treatment at the end of life, quality of life, and quality of communication for older patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) receiving outpatient care at eight nephrology clinics. The intervention was developed and tested with acute care surgical patients at the University of Wisconsin (UW) and is now being testing to see if the intervention will work in a different setting. The intervention will be tested with 320 older adults who have end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and are receiving care from a nephrologist enrolled in the study. Randomly assigned nephrologists within each site will receive the intervention (training to use the BC/WC tool) or to be in the waitlist control, meaning that they will not be offered BC/WC training until the end of the study, when all participants have been enrolled. Participants will be on follow up with surveys and chart review for up to two years after study enrollment. Caregivers will also be invited to participate and complete surveys.

Start: November 2020

Giving Information Systematically and Transparently in Lung and GI Cancer Phase 2

When advanced disease progresses, there comes a time when an oncologists must explain to their patients that they only have months left to live. During these discussions the oncologist attempts to explain to the patient their prognoses and what it means for them going forward. However our prior studies shown that even when patients only have months left to live, most do not understand that their cancer is incurable and that it is late/end-stage. Dying cancer patients who fully understand their prognosis are able to make more informed decisions and are therefore more likely to engage in advanced care planning, and receive care what in consistent with their values and preferences. They are also in a better position to avoid burdensome, non-beneficial care. The investigator developed Oncolo-GIST in order to help increase the number of patients who fully understand their prognosis and its implications. Oncolo-GIST is an intervention aimed at enhancing clinicians' communication with patients by teaching them to relay information both sensitively and using simple terminology. The Oncolo-GIST training will provide instruction in areas such as how to introduce the topic of prognosis (describe scan results as "worse"), how to phrase the prognosis itself ("likely months, not years"), how to explain expected treatment outcomes (e.g., "not expected to be cured by treatment") and how to describe expected treatments impact on quality of life - that is, whether the anticancer treatment is likely to make them feel overall better or worse. The training materials consist of a manual and a set of videos that act out situations described in the manual. The second phase of this study will be a randomized controlled trial. The investigator will recruit (n=50) adults with metastatic GI or lung cancers with scan results that reveal progression (worsened disease) on an initial systemic treatment; that is, patients whose life-expectancy can reliably be estimated to be months, not years. Medical oncologists (n=8) who care for these patients will also be consented for study participation and half (n=4) will be randomized to receive the Oncolo-GIST training. Patients will be assessed by trained research staff in the week prior to a scheduled meeting with their oncologist to discuss the scan results. This will provide patients' baseline levels of prognostic understanding and enable the investigator to determine how the intervention relates to pre-post scan visit changes in prognostic understanding. Patients will be assessed post-scan within a week of that progressive scan visit and then 2 and 4 months later. The assessment battery that will be administered at these time-points will measure the patient's degree of prognostic understanding, the primary outcome of the study. Other outcomes that will be measured by the assessment battery include the patients quality of life, therapeutic alliances of the patient, whether or not a DNR was ordered, the care received by the patient, whether or not the patient preferred greater quality of longer quantity of life, and whether or not the patients received "value-consistent" care.

Start: October 2020

Channels of Communication & Brain Functioning: Pilot fMRI Study

Communication is a social process involving individuals exchanging messages. It is usual to observe different reactions according to the manner of communication, the manner in which such information is exchanged. In this work, it will be examined how different communication modalities cause different reactions in a person. We make the assumption that each communication modality is based on a different brain network.

Start: September 2020

Testing a Novel Manual Communication System for Mechanically Ventilated ICU Patients

The objective of this study is to gather initial information about the testing of a novel manual communication system for mechanically ventilated Intensive Care Unit (ICU) subjects. This phase of the study is not hypotheses based; the goal is to gather data about which potential form factors and interaction modes of the proposed communication system are most intuitive for subjects and caregivers.

Start: September 2016

Manually Operated Communication System

The objective of this study is to gather initial information about the testing of a novel manual communication system - which is currently called MOCS, for Manually Operated Communicated System - for mechanically ventilated Intensive Care Unit (ICU) subjects. This study is not hypothesis based; the goal is to gather data about which interaction modes and teaching approaches of MOCS are most intuitive for subjects and caregivers.

Start: June 2018

Feasibility and Benefits of Digital Services During the COVID19 Pandemic

As a result of the pandemic, hygiene and distancing rules must be followed in Health care/ rehabilitation clinics to ensure the safety of patients and staff. This has led to extensive changes in the therapy processes, including a reduction in group sizes and maintaining distances within the groups, resulting in a reduction in the range of therapies available to individuals, since the number of employees remains unchanged and cannot be increased at will and in the short term due to the lack of qualified staff. In order for the treatment/rehabilitation goals to be achieved nonetheless, new forms of implementation of therapy programs must be developed in addition to organizational adjustments. Digitalization can be a significant support in this respect. The majority of patients in psychosomatic rehabilitation/parkinson treatment possess smartphones, meaning that the necessary infrastructure for the utilization of digital offers is available and can be used to the greatest possible extent. The use of digital measures within the therapeutic services supports the independence of the patients, as they can use the digital offers independently and flexibly in their own time. How should Health care/rehabilitation services be designed in light of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and which services have the potential to buffer future crises: What general recommendations can be derived for the design of such services for routine care?

Start: July 2020

Family Telehealth Project for Foster Care Youth

The purpose of this research is to adapt and evaluate the efficacy of an existing family based intervention to be delivered via telehealth to child welfare-involved (CWI) youth in out-of-home placement and their caregiver of origin.

Start: July 2019

The Center for Peripartum Optimization

In January 2017 investigators started a Center for Peripartum Optimization (CPO) with the aim of optimizing a patient's clinical status in an outpatient setting to minimize unnecessary laboratory tests and studies, costly inpatient consultations, the likelihood of post-surgical adverse events, escalations in level of care, inpatient admissions and readmissions. This research project seeks to evaluate the impact of this innovative concept on patient outcomes during the last 12 months. Investigators will accomplish this by collecting retrospective data from patients' electronic medical records in the intervention group and comparing it to data gathered from a controlled group of patients with similar comorbidities but who were not evaluated at the CPO clinic.

Start: January 2017

Uniform Communication by Midwives in Preparation for an IVF Treatment

Dutch-speaking women who are about to start an IVF treatment will be approached. If they are willing to participate in the study, they will receive an email with a link to an online questionnaire. This questionnaire will evaluate the communication by the midwive in preparation for an IVF treatment. When 50 women have completed the questionnaire a standardized communication protocol will be enrolled. Once all midwives are trained, 50 other IVF patients will be asked to complete the slightly adapted post questionnaire.The data from both questionnaires will be compared.

Start: May 2016

Trial of Strategies to Communicate Genetic Information to Different Ethnic Subpopulations

The goal of this study is to better understand how clinicians give genetic risk information to patients from multi-ethnic groups and how patients understand this information and remember it and act upon it. In addition investigators want to know how to better communicate with patients about complex health issues across the health literacy divide and communication gap that exists between doctors and their patients.

Start: August 2016

Care Transition Patient Experience Study With Electronic Tool

Patients being admitted to hospital are becoming more complex and they often require a team of health professionals (doctors from different disciplines, nurses, and allied health professionals) working together to meet their needs. Effective communication among this team and with patients is essential to providing high quality patient-centered care. Care Connector is an electronic tool that was developed to help health professionals communicate about patient care with each other. It also incorporates best practice whenever possible (such as the used of Patient Oriented Discharge Summary [PODS] developed at University Health Network) during care transitions. We want to understand whether using electronic tools can address the communication issues faced by patients/families, and whether they impact on repeat visits to the Emergency Department or the hospital after discharge. In this study, we will be asking patients and families who have recently been discharged from hospital to describe their experience with communication and care transitions through a brief telephone survey. All of them will be discharged from units where Care Connector was used. However, some of the units would have used the PODS feature while others will not. A small group will also be invited to participate in an in-depth telephone interview. The results of this study will be used to improve Care Connector and to enhance communication and patient experience in general.

Start: February 2018

CALS Patient Activated Learning System (PALS)

The overall goal in this line of inquiry is to test whether the Patient Activated Learning System (PALS) is effective in reducing disparities in access to reliable, easily understood health information, and whether this increased understanding has downstream consequences such as increases in trust in the medical system and self-management behaviors.

Start: February 2020

Ideas, Concerns, Expectations. Implementing Patient-centered Communication

Exploring patients' ideas, concerns and expectation (ICE) is a communication tool to promote patient centredness and shared decision making during a consultation. This study evaluates whether offering ICE training to doctors can decrease overdiagnosis in the management of acute backache.

Start: October 2017