Clinical trial NCT03529812: CBCT for Spiritual Health Clinicians
Official title: Exploring the Effect of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) on the Empathic Accuracy and Resilience of Spiritual Health Clinicians
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Health Behavior
Keywords: Behavioral intervention
Social intervention
Lead sponsor: Emory University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2018-05-18
Enrollment: 304
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: This study aims to enroll 30 hospital chaplain residents, 15 will have the CBCT intervention early and the other 15 will learn about CBCT later. Additionally, 500 patients who have spiritual services provided by the chaplains participating in the study will be enrolled in order to examine patient outcomes.
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: The Emory University Spiritual Health department will incorporate Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) into their training curriculum beginning in Fall 2017, which provides the opportunity to compare students receiving the CBCT addendum with those receiving traditional chaplaincy training. This is a naturalistic study that examines the impact of incorporating CBCT into Emory's spiritual caregiver training program. The researchers will examine the effect of CBCT on empathic accuracy and resilience by comparing the first group of students who receive CBCT-informed training with chaplains who receive standard training in spiritual caregiving and receive CBCT later in the residency year. Comprehensive assessments will be conducted in order to examine whether outcomes for patients are improved for those receiving chaplain spiritual care augmented by CBCT compared to those receiving spiritual care from chaplains who receive CBCT later in their residency.

Detailed description: Based on a wealth of research demonstrating the associations between physical health and psychosocial well-being, modern health care in the United States is characterized by an increasingly patient-centered model of care that places a premium on the holistic treatment of the patient as a physical, psychosocial, and spiritual whole. Hospital chaplains play a vital role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and non-religious patients for a wide variety of stressors, and extensive research indicates that spiritual consults impact patient outcomes and satisfaction. However, there is remarkably little research on the "active ingredients" of chaplaincy spiritual care, and a subsequent lack of standardization and best-practice guidelines informing chaplain training and chaplain spiritual consulting. CBCT ® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training) is a secularized compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong) tradition, and it may be an ideal addendum to both chaplain training programs and to the spiritual care consults provided by Emory University hospital chaplains to approximately 100,000 patients each year. This is a pilot study to explore the feasibility and impact of incorporating CBCT into the educational curriculum for chaplain residents. To this end, the researchers will (1) examine the impact of CBCT on burnout, compassion, and empathic accuracy among chaplains in training, (2) explore whether the impact persists through the end of the resident training, (3) evaluate the timing of the training within the existing curriculum to maximize its impact, (4) evaluate whether CBCT-informed interventions improve patient outcomes, and (5) explore chaplain and patient mediators of the impact of spiritual care consults on patient outcomes. Data acquired in this pilot study will be used to estimate efficacy and to inform a randomized controlled trial.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria for Chaplains:

* Chaplain residents with Spiritual Health at Emory Healthcare

Inclusion Criteria for Chaplains:

* Patient of Emory Healthcare
* Requested a spiritual health consultation with a hospital chaplain

Exclusion Criteria:

* None

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in School-Burnout Inventory (SBI) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Revised University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Empathic Accuracy (EA) Task Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS) Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
measure: Change in Jefferson Scale of Empathy Score
timeFrame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
Secondary outcomes:
measure: National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Distress Thermometer
timeFrame: Day 1 (before Spiritual Health consult)
measure: Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Self-Efficacy for Managing Emotions
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: PROMIS Positive Affect
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: PROMIS Emotional Support
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: PROMIS Informational Support
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: PROMIS Social Isolation
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
measure: Scottish Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM)
timeFrame: Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult)
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: Emory University Hospital Midtown
state: Georgia
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: Emory Clinic
state: Georgia
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: Emory University Hospital
state: Georgia
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: Emory University Winship Cancer Institute
state: Georgia
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: Wesley Woods Center
state: Georgia
city: Atlanta
country: United States
facility: St. Joseph's Hospital
state: Georgia
city: Johns Creek
country: United States
facility: Emory Johns Creek Hospital
state: Georgia
Study officials:
affiliation: Emory University
name: Jennifer Mascaro, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: