Palliative Care: Clinicians’ EstimateS (P:CES)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving the accuracy of health care professionals’ predictions about clinical outcomes
IRAS ID
143577
Contact name
Nicola White
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
St George's University of London
Research summary
Doctors and nurses are inaccurate at predicting survival in patients. This lack of accuracy and consistency can have adverse consequences for patients and their families. Inaccurate prognoses can lead (for example) to delays in access to palliative care services, to patients dying in acute hospitals when they would rather die at home, to delays in access to NHS continuing care funding, and can cause psychological distress to patients and their carers.
This study has been developed in response to a recent independent report (“More Care, Less Pathway”) which made many recommendations about how to improve the care of the dying. In particular the report highlighted the need for more evidence-based research when clinicians give a prognosis due to the distress inaccuracy causes not only for the patient and their family, but for the clinicians too.
The aim of this study is to identify a group clinicians who are most accurate, or “experts”, at predicting outcomes.
To do this, we will create a series of anonymous case histories, or “vignettes”, which represent real patients who have been referred to palliative care services. Palliative Care Clinicians will then be asked, via electronic survey, to provide a prognosis for each vignette.
The vignettes will help to test any future training interventions designed to improve outcome prediction. The expert population will be able to help us understand what factors clinicians should look at when formulating a prognosis.
REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/WM/0121
Date of REC Opinion
9 May 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion