Project CARE-D - Online Caregiver Education for Dementia

Texas Christian University

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 1

Conditions: Dementia

Treatments: Behavioral: Business as usual learning; Behavioral: Structured Retrieval Practice; Behavioral: Standard Retrieval Practice

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07377318

2024-153

Details and patient eligibility

About

Managing daily symptoms for people with Alzheimer's Disease or Related Dementia (ADRD) can be challenging and confusing for informal caregivers who are family members or friends and not paid for their assistance. This is due, in part, to gaps in knowledge. Ensuring that informal caregivers are properly educated about ADRD symptoms and treatment guidelines is an essential first step for reducing adverse health events that people living with ADRD experience and addressing the substantial emotional and physical burden that caregivers report. The goal of is project is to improve caregiver education to support treatment adherence for ADRD with retrieval practice. This intervention incorporates principles from the science of learning for structuring retrieval practice to optimize learning and that are effective across the lifespan to compensate for gaps in knowledge and processing capabilities including learners who experience associative memory deficits due to age, their own disease state, or other factors.

Enrollment: 65 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• informal caregivers
• located in the United States
• Speak and read English
• free of cognitive deficits that would prevent consenting and/or completing online experimental tasks

Exclusion criteria

• formal caregivers
• former caregivers who are not currently in a care role for a person living with dementia
• technology issues that cause loss of data (e.g., internet connection failure)
• not finishing the experiment
• significant distractions during experimental tasks
• failure to pass attention or bot checks

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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65 participants in 3 patient groups

Structured Retrieval Practice (SRP)

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Structured Retrieval Practice

Standard Retrieval Practice

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Standard Retrieval Practice

Self-paced Study

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Business as usual learning