Computerized PAINRelieveIt Protocol for Cancer Pain Control in Hospice

University of Illinois

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cancer; Pain

Treatments: Behavioral: PAINReportIt; Behavioral: PAINConsultN; Behavioral: PAINUCope

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02026115

2013-0986

IH-1304-6553

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study purpose is to compare usual hospice care and PAINRelieveIt groups for effects on: (1) patient outcomes (analgesic adherence; worst pain intensity, satisfaction, and misconceptions) and lay caregiver outcome (pain misconceptions) in a diverse sample of 250 cancer patient-caregiver dyads receiving hospice care; and (2) nurse outcomes (obtained appropriate analgesics for patient) in a sample of hospice nurses. The investigators hypothesize that at posttest, controlling for pretest data and compared to the usual care group, the PAINRelieveIt group will: a) report decreased scores for worst pain intensity and pain misconceptions; b) have increased analgesic adherence (primary outcome); and c) have a larger proportion who report satisfaction with pain intensity and whose nurses obtained appropriate analgesics for the patients' pain.

Full description

Unrelieved cancer pain at the end of life is a major health problem and is inconsistent with patient-centered goals for their last days. Building on a successful approach researched in outpatient oncology settings, the investigators propose a study testing PAINRelieveIt, a system-level intervention of computerized tools with patient-reported pain outcomes (in English, Spanish, Chinese languages), decision support for clinicians (English) and multimedia education tailored to each cancer patient and lay caregiver.

Using a 1-week pre-test/post-test randomized design in patients receiving home level hospice care provided by two Chicago-area hospices, we will compare effects of usual hospice care with PAINReportIt Summary and usual hospice care with PAINRelieveIt on pain outcomes. The tablet-based PAINRelieveIt includes valid and reliable pain tools (PAINReportIt), a summary of the patient's pain data with decision support for hospice nurses to obtain recommendations for algorithm-based analgesic therapies (PAINConsultN), and multimedia education tailored to the patient's and lay caregiver's pain management misconceptions (PainUCope). Patient's/caregiver's answers are automatically stored in an electronic database, from which the system generates a PAINReportIt Summary (usual hospice care control group); PAINConsultN and PainUCope (experimental group). All patients will receive usual hospice care. All patients/caregivers will complete PAINReportIt at pretest and 1-week later (posttest); patients also complete parts of PAINReportIt daily. Via daily e-mail updates, the control-group hospice nurses will receive a PAINReportIt Summary and experimental-group hospice nurses will receive a PAINConsultN. Additionally, experimental group patients/caregivers will view multimedia educational materials via PAINUCope to help patients report pain and adhere to prescribed analgesics.

Specific aims are to compare usual hospice care and PAINRelieveIt groups for effects on:

1. Patient outcomes (analgesic adherence; worst pain intensity, satisfaction, and misconceptions) and lay caregiver outcome (pain misconceptions) in a diverse sample of 250 cancer patient-caregiver dyads receiving hospice care.
2. Nurse outcomes (obtained appropriate analgesics for patient) in a sample of hospice nurses.

The investigators hypothesize that at posttest, controlling for pretest data and compared to the usual care group, the PAINRelieveIt group will: a) report decreased scores for worst pain intensity and pain misconceptions; b) have increased analgesic adherence (primary outcome); and c) have a larger proportion who report satisfaction with pain intensity and whose nurses obtained appropriate analgesics for the patients' pain.

Findings will guide future system-level research to implement PAINRelieveIt in a multi-site, longitudinal trial that will test the effect of disseminating this technology on clinical decisions for managing pain and patient/caregiver pain outcomes in a national sample of hospices. This approach offers improved pain control for dying patients and other populations.

Enrollment: 262 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Study inclusion criteria require that the patient: (1) be admitted to home care level of hospice service; (2) has a diagnosis of cancer; (3) has experienced worst pain in the past 24 hours >3 on a 0-10 scale; (4) speaks, reads and writes English, Spanish, or Chinese; (5) is > 18 years of age; 6) has a lay caregiver who is > 18 years of age and willing to participate; and (7) has a life expectancy of about 19 days at the time of study enrollment, as suggested by a Palliative Performance Scale (PPS)41 score of > 40.

The lay caregiver inclusion criteria require that the individual: (1) be designated as the primary lay caregiver for the participating patient during the 7-day study period; (2) speaks, reads and writes English, Spanish, or Chinese; and (3) is > 18 years of age.

The hospice nurse inclusion criteria require that the individual: (1) be assigned as the primary hospice nurse for the participating patient during the 7-day study period; (2) speaks, reads and writes English (since the PAINConsultN is in English) but may speak Spanish or Chinese for clinical care purposes; and (3) is > 18 years of age.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients and lay caregivers will be excluded if they: (1) are legally blind or deaf; or (2) have cognitive or physical impairments making it impossible to communicate or to complete study instruments at enrollment or any time during the study.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

---

262 participants in 2 patient groups

usual hospice care

Active Comparator group

Description:

The usual care group will receive the typical hospice care and interact with PAINReportIt to provide data necessary for the analysis of study aims. They will use the tablet computer at baseline and at the study end and daily between. They also will have access to what looks like PAINUCope, but is really computer games so that they have similar attention with the computer as the experimental group. For ethical purposes, we will provide a PAINReportIt Summary to their hospice nurses to have access to their pain assessment information, something we did not do in previous studies focused on efficacy of the interventions.

Treatment:

Behavioral: PAINReportIt

PAINRelieveIt (experimental group)

Experimental group

Description:

We will use Nursing Consult LLC's PAINRelieveIt software that includes: (1) PAINReportIt that has screens to collect pain, medications, and misconception data; (2) the intervention for the nurse clinicians, PAINConsultN; and (3) the intervention for the patients and lay caregiver, PAINUCope. This innovative, new program is the first computerized, multi-dimensional, self-report measure of pain with clinician decision support for analgesic prescriptions and multimedia patient education tailored to the patient's misconceptions and pain. Prototype versions of PAINConsultN and PAINUCope were tested in recently completed studies among outpatients with cancer and patients with sickle cell disease in outpatient, emergency and hospital settings.

Treatment:

Behavioral: PAINUCope

Behavioral: PAINConsultN

Behavioral: PAINReportIt