Increasing Preparedness for Caregiving, Death and Continued Life in Partners of Patients With Incurable Cancer - a Webtrial

Partners of patients with advanced cancer often take a great responsibility for the patient's care. They are often unprepared for a situation where they are faced both with the role as caregivers and with the patient's impending death. This lack of preparedness has been associated with psychological and physical unhealth. Interventions delivered by multi-professional palliative care teams have proved to be effective both in promoting preparedness for caregiving, death and the continued life of the bereaved. This project holds significant research questions on how to implement an intervention and make it easily available to all those in need and prevent negative consequences related to caregiving and the loss of a partner. To reach as many partners as possible, a web-based intervention has been developed on a website (närstående.se) which consists of supportive films and text as well as an online forum. The films show conversations between partners (actors) and healthcare professionals (authentic). The conversations concern potentially modifiable topics, such as medical issues and communication, that are associated with preparedness. The project will study the effects of proactive telephone calls that will be delivered to partners with the aim to support their use of the website. Instruments for measuring outcomes will be available both on paper or electronically. To obtain data for the main outcomes, preparedness for caregiving and for death, 200 partners will be recruited and get access to the website. They will also receive a telephone call with instructions on how to use the website and have access to technical support if necessary. Preparedness for caregiving will be measured at baseline and four weeks later (pre- and post-intervention). Preparedness for death will be measured eight weeks after the patient's death. The status of the modifiable topics will be measured at baseline and four weeks later. Physical and psychological health of the partner will be measured one year later. Further, semi-structured interviews will be performed with participants to explore the feasibility and acceptibility of the web intervention. The project will add significant knowledge about whether web-based support has the potential to increase preparedness and decrease negative consequences for partners of patients with advanced cancer during ongoing care and after the patient's death. Because current trends point towards increased levels of home-care, web-based interventions could be a way to reach more partners in a more cost-effective way. This project is meant to be a pilot to a larger study with a randomised controlled design.