Written by Camara Van Breemen

RESEARCH PROJECT: Serious Illness Conversation Guide

Lead investigators/designated PI’s

Nadine Lusney, Camara Van Breemen, and Hal Siden 

Approval Date

October 26, 2018

Timeline

Est. end date December 2020

Updates

Preparing drafting for publication nad working on analyzing the survey responses (March 2022) 

The Serious Illness Conversation Guide (SICG) is a template widely used by healthcare providers when communicating with seriously ill adults. Pediatric palliative care (PPC) clinicians based at Canuck Place completed the process outlined by Adriadne labs, the developer of the SICG, to adapt the guide for pediatrics (SICG-Peds). This project will further evaluate the SICG-Peds by implementing a communication intervention by a clinician educational workshop. 

Research Questions

  1. Does SICG-Peds impact a pediatric clinician’s skill and confidence in leading difficult conversations with families of medically fragile children?
  2. To further validate the tool, what do clinicians identify as the most and least helpful aspects of the SICG-Peds in clinical practice?

The aim of this project is to further evaluate the SICG-Peds, its utility in providing better Advanced Care Planning and improving clinicians’ confidence in Advanced Care Planning and serious-illness conversations for clinicians at Canuck Place and BC Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

This study will have a mixed methods design with pre and post workshop surveys and qualitative interviews. Participants will be members of interdisciplinary teams practicing in a tertiary/quaternary children’s hospital, BC Children’s Hospital, and Canuck Place who work with children with life-limiting conditions. Participants will attend a 2.5 hour workshop, complete pre and post workshop surveys and follow-up surveys at six and twelve months. Some participants will be invited to participate in a one hour semi-structured interview.