Kathleen Unroe, M.D., MHA, describes the goal and interventions of the UPLIFT-AD study.
Transcript:
In UPLIFT, we created a palliative care training program for nursing home staff, and we coupled this with external specialty palliative care providers coming into the facility and providing consultations for individual residents whom the staff identified as having palliative care needs. The goal of this study is to see whether this program impacts the symptoms, quality of care and quality of life of nursing home residents with moderate to advanced dementia.
Dr. Unroe emphasizes assessing palliative care by its impact on residents’ daily symptoms rather than major events.
Transcript:
Whenever we are trying to decide whether to invest in a new program, we need to understand: Does it work? Does it help support nursing home residents and increase their quality of life — enhance the quality of care? We chose in our study to focus on the symptoms experienced by the residents — symptoms of pain, of shortness of breath, of agitation. We are seeking to understand the impact of our palliative care program on the day-to-day clinical experience of nursing home residents. It is certainly easier to measure events such as death or hospital transfer, and indeed, those are the outcomes we see in tons of research studies. Our goal, though, is to see whether additional support and resources impacts that day-to-day experience, and that requires us to do the work of collecting detailed symptom assessments at regular intervals on a large population.
