Clinical trial NCT06206551: Implementing Spiritual Care in Inpatient Palliative Care
Official title: Implementing Spiritual Care in Inpatient Palliative Care
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Conditions: Cancer
Heart Failure
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Lateral Sclerosis
Lead sponsor: University Hospital Muenster
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2024-01-16
Enrollment: 300
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: OTHER
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: The study population consists of patients assigned to general and specialized Palliative Care due to justifying indications like progressive malign and non-malign diseases that need inpatient treatment provided by either counselling services or on palliative ward.

Brief summary: The goal of this observational study is to is to ascertain the spiritual needs of palliative patients in a standardized manner using the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire and to promptly address those needs by (specialized) spiritual care.

To determine whether the effort of implementing the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire on a sustainable basis on the one hand brings the expected benefit to the patients and on the other hand can be provided by the pastoral care personnel, at Muenster University Hospital (specialized) spiritual care interventions will be documented in detail and retrospectively and prospectively collected data will be compared.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* All individual indication for general and specialised Palliative Care in clinical setting/routine (e.g.):

  * Progressive, malign tumours
  * Progressive, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
  * Patients with progressive disease and limited life expectancy (\< ca. 12 months)
* Patients attended by Palliative Caregivers in counselling services or on palliative ward
* Life expectancy \> 2 weeks
* Sufficient comprehension of German language and writing that allows an autonomous or supported completion of the questionnaire.
* Existence of an independently signed written consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Severe cognitive impairment
* capacity for consent lacking or impaired
* impaired comprehension of German language and writing that would not allow an autonomous or supported completion of the questionnaire.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Feasibility of standardized and evidence-based recordation and implementation of Spiritual Care in Palliative Care
timeFrame: 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Recordation of needs for general / specialized spiritual care in palliative care
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Differences in use and outcomes comparing standardised and non-standardised evaluation of spiritual care needs (comparison with retrospective data).
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Examination of further descriptive and analysing comparisons of retrospective data and intervention group.
timeFrame: 6 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Muenster
country: Germany
facility: University Hospital Muenster
state: North Rhine-Westphalia
Study officials:
affiliation: University Hospital Muenster
name: Philipp Lenz, Prof. Dr. med.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: