Clinical trial NCT04010136: Identification of Elderly Patients in Need of Palliative Care by Family Physicians
Official title: Identification of Elderly Patients in Need of Palliative Care by Family Physicians - the Role of Palliative Care Training and the Use of a Standardized Tool (GerPal_ID). A Two-phase Protocol: Randomized Trial and Prevalence Study
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: WITHDRAWN
Phase: NA
Conditions: Palliative Care
Primary Health Care
Geriatrics
Keywords: Palliative care
Primary health care
Palliative care training
Prevalence
Geriatrics
Lead sponsor: University of Beira Interior
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2019-07-08
Enrollment: 0
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: The GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region will be invited to take part in this trial. The invitations will be conducted with the help of the Center Healthcare Administrative Region and by spreading the invitation in some general practice professionals' mailing lists and online platforms.

First, GPs will be contacted and those who accept to participate will be randomized into one of the four-harm study groups - 1. Control Group, 2. Identification tool group, 3. Standard PC training, 4 - Clinical cases based PC training.

The accuracy on the identification before and after intervention will be compared within each group and between the four groups using a clinical record based identification tool (CCB-PCId).

A PC expert panel will build a tool, clinical record based, to evaluate the accuracy of palliative care needs identification.
Primary purpose: SCREENING

Brief summary: In the last decades, the number of people living with chronic diseases had increased, mainly due to the aging of the population. Such chronic, progressive, life threatening and burdening diseases, play an important role in this new era of palliative care.

Despite the growing scientific and social interest in palliative care, there is still a delay in the identification of patients with palliative care needs. This leads to a late integration in a palliative care network and consequent deprivation of the major advantages of an early and progressive integration.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of palliative care training and the use of a structured tool, in the identification of the elderly population in need of palliative care by family physicians. And also to conduct a prevalence study to further the knowledge about how many elder people in primary care have the need of a palliative care approach.

Detailed description: The study consists of two phases:

1. Randomized trial with General Practitioners (GP) to determine the role of two different training programs and a structured tool in the identification of geriatric patients with palliative care needs.
2. Cross-sectional, analytical study of the prevalence and patterns of geriatric patients with Palliative Care (PC) needs, managed in primary care in Portugal's Center Healthcare Administrative Region.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region

Exclusion Criteria:

* Previous palliative care training.
* Refuse to participate

Primary outcomes:
measure: GPs' rate of identification of patients with palliative care needs
timeFrame: 2 weeks
measure: Prevalence geriatric patients with palliative care needs
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Sociodemographic characteristics of geriatric patients with palliative care needs
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Clinical characteristics of geriatric patients with palliative care need
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Complexity of geriatric patients with palliative care need
timeFrame: 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Coimbra
country: Portugal
facility: Center Healthcare Administrative Region
Study officials:
affiliation: Faculty of Health Science - University of Beira Interior
name: Carlos Seiça Cardoso, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
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