Identification of Elderly Patients in Need of Palliative Care by Family Physicians (GerPal-ID)

University of Beira Interior

Status: Withdrawn

Conditions: Geriatrics; Primary Health Care; Palliative Care

Treatments: Other: Palliative care training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04010136

CE-UBI-Pj-2019-023:ID1244

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full 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.

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

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

Exclusion criteria

• Previous palliative care training.
• Refuse to participate

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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0 participants in 4 patient groups

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region that will be given no intervention

Identification tool group

Experimental group

Description:

GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region that will receive access to the Identification tool Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT-PT) with a brief training on how to use it.

Treatment:

Other: Palliative care training

Standard Palliative Care Training

Experimental group

Description:

GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region that will receive palliative care training according to the Center Healthcare Administrative Region standard model of training.

Treatment:

Other: Palliative care training

Clinical cases based Palliative Care Training

Experimental group

Description:

GPs (fellows and specialists) from Center Healthcare Administrative Region that will receive palliative care training using a clinical cases based model.

Treatment:

Other: Palliative care training