About this trial
This study will test the Dementia Advance Care Planning (AD ACP) Toolkit intervention to usual care in facilitating goals of care (GOC) discussions between People Living with Dementia (PLwD) and primary care team members over an 18-month period. The primary outcome is to assess the frequency and quality of GOC discussions with PLwD. Secondary outcomes include the identification of preferred surrogates, assessment of decisional capacity, and the completion of portable ACP orders. This randomized clinical trial aims to determine if the AD ACP Toolkit can enhance ACP practices and improve care planning outcomes for PLwD compared to the standard care approach.
Eligibility criteria
Qualifiers
Must be an MD/APP, employed at a primary care clinic within UNC HEALTH clinics with ≥60 PLwD encounters per year, who sees older adult patients, along with their associated nurses and social workers.
Eligibility for training with AD ACP Toolkit will include the above and the provision of care at an intervention clinic.
For Aim 3, only the trained intervention site primary care team members will be eligible for the implementation surveys or the interviews.
Must be a PLwD age 65 years or older seen by either the intervention or control sites' primary care teams' MD/APP in the 18-month intervention window for Aim 1.
Disqualifiers
We will exclude primary care team members who do not care for older adults (e.g. pediatricians or lactation nurses), are employed at geriatric specialty or dementia specialty clinics, or are without a primary care panel (e.g., only urgent care).
Patients will be excluded if they have not been seen in the past 18 months by their primary care team, or if they do not have a diagnosis of ADRD.
Trial design
Treatments tested in this trial
- Primary Care Team Advance Care Planning With People with Alzheimer's Disease or a Related Dementia Training
- Care as Usual
Treatment groups
Sponsors and collaborators
University of Pittsburgh
Lead sponsor
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Collaborator
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Collaborator