CBCT for Spiritual Health Clinicians

NCT03529812 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: IRB00098222
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 304
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 7

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.

Conditions

Health Behavior

Keywords

Behavioral intervention; Social intervention

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (8)

• Change in Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in School-Burnout Inventory (SBI) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Revised University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Empathic Accuracy (EA) Task Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS) Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

• Change in Jefferson Scale of Empathy Score

  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.

  Baseline, Week 5, Week 24, Week 29

Secondary Outcomes (8)

• 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 Positive Affect

  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)

Study Arms (2)

Early-start group for CBCT-informed training

EXPERIMENTAL

Hospital chaplain residents receiving the Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) education during the first unit of their year-long residency.

Behavioral: CBCT-informed training

Delayed-start group for CBCT-informed training

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Hospital chaplain residents receiving the Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) education midway through their year-long residency.

Behavioral: CBCT-informed training

Interventions

CBCT-informed training BEHAVIORAL

Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) is a secularized compassion meditation program adapted from the Tibetan Buddhist mind training (lojong) tradition. Lojong practices utilize a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge one's unexamined thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic emotions and behavior towards all people.

Delayed-start group for CBCT-informed training; Early-start group for CBCT-informed training

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Chaplain residents with Spiritual Health at Emory Healthcare
• Patient of Emory Healthcare
• Requested a spiritual health consultation with a hospital chaplain

You may not qualify if:

• None

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Emory University: lead

Study Sites (7)

Emory University Hospital Midtown

Atlanta, Georgia, 30308, United States

Location

Emory Clinic

Atlanta, Georgia, 30322, United States

Location

Emory University Hospital

Atlanta, Georgia, 30322, United States

Location

Emory University Winship Cancer Institute

Atlanta, Georgia, 30322, United States

Location

Wesley Woods Center

Atlanta, Georgia, 30329, United States

Location

St. Joseph's Hospital

Atlanta, Georgia, 30342, United States

Location

Emory Johns Creek Hospital

Johns Creek, Georgia, 30097, United States

Location

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Health Behavior

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavior

Study Officials

• Jennifer Mascaro, PhD

  Emory University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NON RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Assistant Professor

Model Details: This study aims to enroll 30 hospital chaplain residents, 15 will have the CBCT intervention early and the other 15 will learn about CBCT later. Additionally, 500 patients who have spiritual services provided by the chaplains participating in the study will be enrolled in order to examine patient outcomes.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: May 8, 2018
• First Posted: May 18, 2018
• Study Start: July 5, 2018
• Primary Completion: May 7, 2020
• Study Completion: May 7, 2020
• Last Updated: May 21, 2020

Record last verified: 2020-05

Locations

US (7)