Exploring the Effect of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) on the Empathic Accuracy and Resilience of Spiritual Health Clinicians
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Health Behavior
- Sponsor
- Emory University
- Enrollment
- 304
- Locations
- 7
- Primary Endpoint
- Change in Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS) Score
- Status
- Completed
- Last Updated
- 5 years ago
Overview
Brief Summary
The Emory University Spiritual Health department will incorporate Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) into their training curriculum beginning in Fall 2017, which provides the opportunity to compare students receiving the CBCT addendum with those receiving traditional chaplaincy training. This is a naturalistic study that examines the impact of incorporating CBCT into Emory's spiritual caregiver training program. The researchers will examine the effect of CBCT on empathic accuracy and resilience by comparing the first group of students who receive CBCT-informed training with chaplains who receive standard training in spiritual caregiving and receive CBCT later in the residency year. Comprehensive assessments will be conducted in order to examine whether outcomes for patients are improved for those receiving chaplain spiritual care augmented by CBCT compared to those receiving spiritual care from chaplains who receive CBCT later in their residency.
Detailed Description
Based on a wealth of research demonstrating the associations between physical health and psychosocial well-being, modern health care in the United States is characterized by an increasingly patient-centered model of care that places a premium on the holistic treatment of the patient as a physical, psychosocial, and spiritual whole. Hospital chaplains play a vital role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and non-religious patients for a wide variety of stressors, and extensive research indicates that spiritual consults impact patient outcomes and satisfaction. However, there is remarkably little research on the "active ingredients" of chaplaincy spiritual care, and a subsequent lack of standardization and best-practice guidelines informing chaplain training and chaplain spiritual consulting. CBCT ® (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training) is a secularized compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong) tradition, and it may be an ideal addendum to both chaplain training programs and to the spiritual care consults provided by Emory University hospital chaplains to approximately 100,000 patients each year. This is a pilot study to explore the feasibility and impact of incorporating CBCT into the educational curriculum for chaplain residents. To this end, the researchers will (1) examine the impact of CBCT on burnout, compassion, and empathic accuracy among chaplains in training, (2) explore whether the impact persists through the end of the resident training, (3) evaluate the timing of the training within the existing curriculum to maximize its impact, (4) evaluate whether CBCT-informed interventions improve patient outcomes, and (5) explore chaplain and patient mediators of the impact of spiritual care consults on patient outcomes. Data acquired in this pilot study will be used to estimate efficacy and to inform a randomized controlled trial.
Investigators
Jennifer Mascaro
Assistant Professor
Emory University
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- Not provided
Exclusion Criteria
- Not provided
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Change in Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS) is a 15-item, likert-scale inventory that assesses the extent to which someone endorses a belief in something larger than themselves. Participants respond to statements like "life is inherently meaningful" on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = I totally disagree, 3 = I'm in between, and 5 = I totally agree. Certain items are scored in reverse. The total score ranges from 15 to 75 and higher scores indicate stronger belief.
Change in Revised University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA) is a 20-item questionnaire measuring general feelings of social isolation and dissatisfaction with one's social interactions. Participants rate each item on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (often). When scoring the scale, certain items are reversed so that low scores correspond with low loneliness. Total scores range from 20 to 80, where high scores indicate high feelings of loneliness.
Change in Empathic Accuracy (EA) Task Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Empathic Accuracy (EA) Task is a dynamic video assessment that asks subjects to continuously rate the emotions of others as they tell emotional autobiographical stories. Empathic accuracy is the correlation between feelings of the story-tellers in the video and what the participants perceive the story-tellers feelings to be.
Change in Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) is a 14-item inventory assessing emotional well-being. Participants indicate how frequently they have experienced different feelings (such as feeling happy) in the past month. Responses are are a 6-point scale where 0 = never and 5 = every day. Total scores range from 0 to 70 and higher scores indicate greater well being.
Change in Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) is a 42-item likert-scale measure that assesses the frequency of symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress during the past week. Respondents indicate the degree to which they agree with each statement on a scale of 0 to 3 where 0 = does not apply to me at all and 3 = applied to me very much, or most of the time. Total scores range from 0 to 126 and higher scores indicate increased feelings of depression, anxiety and stress.
Change in Jefferson Scale of Empathy Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Jefferson Scale of Empathy is a 20-item scale designed to measure empathy in practicing health care professionals and health care professional students. Participants answer on a 7-point scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. Total scores range from 20 to 140 where higher scores indicate increased empathy.
Change in Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) is a 30-item inventory, the ProQOL is the most commonly used measure of the negative and positive effects of helping others who experience suffering. It has sub-scales for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue. The sub-scales are summed and converted to t-scores with a mean of 50 and standard deviation of 10. Scores higher than 57 indicate professional satisfaction while scores below 40 indicate possible problems with feeling satisfied professionally.
Change in School-Burnout Inventory (SBI) Score
Time Frame: Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29
The School-Burnout Inventory is a 9-item survey asking students about how much burnout, in the context of an academic environment, they have felt in the past month (for example, "I feel overwhelmed by my schoolwork"). Respondents indicate the degree to which they agree with each statement on a scale of 1 to 6 where 1 = completely disagree and 6 = completely agree. Total scores can range from 9 to 54, with higher scores indicating more burnout.
Secondary Outcomes
- PROMIS Positive Affect(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- PROMIS Social Isolation(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Distress Thermometer(Day 1 (before Spiritual Health consult))
- Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Self-Efficacy for Managing Emotions(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- PROMIS Informational Support(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- Scottish Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM)(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))
- PROMIS Emotional Support(Day 1 (after Spiritual Health consult))