End-stage renal disease (ESRD) currently affects nearly 662,000 people in the U.S. While dialysis is the treatment of choice for over 90% of patients with ESRD and is universally covered by Medicare regardless of patient age or means, the likelihood that dialysis can restore health or prolong life is limited; only 50% of dialysis patients are alive 3 years after the onset of ESRD. Thus many dialysis patients and their family members or surrogate decision-makers have to face difficult end-of-life decisions. Although advance care planning (ACP), in which patients and surrogate decision-makers discuss future health states and treatment options, is a central tenet of dialysis care, the vast majority of dialysis patients (\>90%) report never engaging in ACP discussions with their care providers. The lack of effective ACP to prepare patients and their surrogates for end-of-life decision making with sufficient time before death has deleterious consequences at all levels of society. Consequences have been well documented: prolonged use of futile treatment at the end of life, which misuses the healthcare system, high levels of surrogate distress during decision making, which emanates from not having a clear understanding of the patient's wishes, and surrogates experiencing later sequelae of psychosocial morbidities, such as depression and family discord.

"Sharing Patient's Illness Representation to Increase Trust" (SPIRIT), a patient and family-centered ACP intervention based on the Representational Approach to Patient Education, was designed by the research team to establish a testable model of how end-of-life care discussions could occur between a dialysis patient and his/her chosen surrogate (usually a spouse or adult child). The discussions, which are facilitated by a trained care provider, are framed around addressing each individual's representations of (beliefs about) the illness and views of life-sustaining measures at the end of life. SPIRIT follows a six-step learning objective over two-sessions, which together take about 60 minutes. The care provider, who is value-neutral, guides the patient in examining his/her values related to end-of-life care, helps the surrogate understand the patient's illness progression, and prepares the surrogate for his/her role as a surrogate in a highly emotionally charged medical setting. Over the last decade, SPIRIT has been tested to establish feasibility, patient-surrogate acceptability, and efficacy. In these explanatory trials carried out in dialysis clinics, SPIRIT was delivered by trained research nurses. Patients and surrogates in SPIRIT showed significant improvement in preparedness for end-of-life decision making, including the extent to which: a) the patient and surrogate agreed on end-of-life care goals, b) the patient had reduced conflict about the benefits and burdens of life-sustaining treatments, and c) the surrogate had increased confidence about the role of surrogate. Key to establishing the utility of this approach for broader generalizability, surrogates who received SPIRIT reported significantly improved post-bereavement psychological outcomes after the patient's death compared to those who did not. The logical, critical next step is to ask: Will SPIRIT be effective as part of routine care in real-world clinical settings with less control? To address this very issue, the researchers will conduct a real-world effectiveness-implementation study, an essential step prior to widespread implementation of SPIRIT.

This study is a multicenter, clinic-level cluster randomized trial to evaluate the effectiveness of SPIRIT delivered by dialysis care providers as part of routine care in free-standing outpatient dialysis clinics compared to usual care plus delayed SPIRIT implementation. Simultaneously, the researchers will evaluate the implementation of SPIRIT, including sustainability. This study will use a Type I effectiveness-implementation hybrid approach that combines testing intervention effectiveness and gathering information about implementation of an efficacious intervention in a real world setting. To maximize data on the implementation process and sustainability, the researchers chose a delayed intervention design in which clinics are randomized either to implement SPIRIT immediately after randomization (i.e., initial implementation) or to maintain usual care for a comparison condition and then implement the intervention in control clinics following conclusion of this clinical trial (i.e., delayed implementation). The intent of the delayed implementation group was provide descriptive data for translation of the intervention into clinical practice (versus data collected on dyad participants in this current study), however, this portion of the study could not be performed due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The short-term goal is to generate sufficient evidence to accelerate the integration of SPIRIT into dialysis practice and policy. This study will recruit 400 dyads of patients at high risk of death in the next year and their surrogates (a total of 800 individuals) from dialysis clinics in four states. The dialysis clinics will be randomized to implement SPIRIT or to maintain usual care to serve as a control to the intervention. Participants will complete a follow-up assessment two weeks after the the study intervention. They will then be observed for 9 months (or until the death of the patient) with an optional extension of the observational period for an additional 12 months, for up to 21 months of observation. Individual patient participation will end after the observation period (9 or 21 months) or death, whichever occurs first; surrogate participation will end after the observation period (9 or 21 months) or at the completion of the post-bereavement surveys which are administered 3-months after the death of the patient (up to 24 months).