The ACTIVE Intervention to Improve Hospice Care

The ACTIVE Intervention to Improve Hospice Caregiver Pain Management The major goal of this project is to implement and test this promising intervention in three hospice programs. The mixed methods evaluation of this RCT will provide evidence-based data for a tested intervention manual that hospice staff members can use to integrate the intervention into their practices. We will rigorously test the effectiveness of the ACTIVE intervention. We will investigate whether the assessment of the informal caregivers perception of pain management will identify those who will benefit most and whether changes in the perceptions of informal caregivers will result in improvement of patient pain. We will explore barriers and challenges in the implementation of this into every day practice within hospice

Inclusion criteria

Informal Caregiver Inclusion Criteria

• Informal caregiver of an enrolled hospice patient
• Age 18 or over and legally able to provide informed consent
• Involved in decisions related to pain medications
• Access to at least one of the below:

• A standard land line telephone
• A high-speed Internet connection with operational computer
• Without functional hearing loss or with a hearing aid that allows the participant to conduct phone or Internet conversations as assessed by the research staff (by questioning and observation

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Exclusion criteria

Informal caregivers of hospice patients with a life expectancy less than 14 days as assessed by the hospice nurse with the palliative performance scale (PPS) (99)

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