Urinary Tract, Sexual Organs, and Pregnancy Conditions

All Conditions

Respiratory Tract (Lung and Bronchial) Diseases

Symptoms and General Pathology

Heart and Blood Diseases

Rare Diseases

Behaviors and Mental Disorders

Kidney Diseases

Lung Diseases

Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive

Heart Failure

Death

Respiratory Tract Diseases

Chronic Disease

Disease Attributes

Lung Diseases, Obstructive

Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease

Quality of Life

Subjects in the relaxation meditation group will meet with a facilitator three times, for a period of forty-five minutes each; they will listen to a non-guided relaxation CD.

The Outlook intervention is designed to assist patients self-manage role changes by guiding them through life review, current issues of forgiveness and conflict resolution, and future orientation, with planning heritage and legacy.

Outlook Attention Control

Outlook Intervention

Karen Steinhauser, PhD

James A Tulsky, MD

This study will demonstrate whether an end-of-life preparation and completion intervention reduces anxiety, depression, pain and other symptoms and improves functional status, spiritual well-being, and quality of life. If effective, the intervention offers a brief, inexpensive, and transportable non-physician treatment method for improving the experience of individuals in the latter stages of life-limiting illness.

Efforts to improve end-of-care often focus on pain and symptom control, but few, if any, effective interventions exist addressing preparation and completion. We designed an end-of-life preparation and completion intervention, based on the human development literature identifying life completion as a developmental task and the robust evidence in health communication and clinical psychology that addresses the value of expressing emotions and stress on health outcomes. Our specific aims are 1) evaluate the impact of an intervention that promotes discussions of end-of-life preparation and completion on health outcomes in dying persons, including pain and symptoms, physical function, emotional function (anxiety and depression), spiritual well-being, and quality of life at the end of life and 2) evaluate the content of the such discussions, examining task variation associated with gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, quality of communication with family, spirituality, and stage of illness to improve understanding of the need for tailored intervention content based on demographics or location in the trajectory of illness. We propose a randomized control trial to evaluate the intervention. 140 patients with advanced cancer, CHF, ESRD, or COPD will be randomly assigned into one of two intervention groups and complete a brief battery of pre-test measures. Subjects in the first group ("treatment") will meet with a facilitator three times for a period of forty-five minutes each. In the first session, subjects will be asked to discuss issues related to life review. A week later, participants will be asked to speak in more depth about issues such as regret, forgiveness and things left undone. In the final session, a week hence, subjects will focus on heritage and legacy. The subjects in the second group ("attention control") will meet with a facilitator three times for a period of forty-five minutes each and be asked to listen to a non-guided relaxation CD. One week and two weeks later, participants in all groups will receive post-test measures administered by a blinded interviewer.

Outlook: An Intervention to Improve Quality of Life in Serious Illness

National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)

Duke University

Study title	NCT ID	Conditions	Interventions	Eligibility	Organization	Link
Outlook: An Intervention to Improve Quality of Life in Serious Illness	NCT00939146	Neoplasms Pulmonary Disea... Heart Failure Renal Disease	Outlook Attenti... Outlook Interve...	18 Years -	Duke University
Outlook: An Intervention to Improve Quality of Life in Serious Illness	NCT00939146	Neoplasms Pulmonary Disea... Heart Failure Renal Disease	Outlook Attenti... Outlook Interve...	18 Years -	Duke University

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