Developing and Piloting a Multi-component Technology-based Care Intervention to Address Patient Symptoms and Caregiver Burden in Home Hospice. Phase 1.

Developing and Piloting a Multi-component Technology-based Care Intervention to Address Patient Symptoms and Caregiver Burden in Home Hospice

With the growth of hospice, older adults have the opportunity to receive home-based care aimed at reducing suffering and focusing on quality of life at the end of life. While use of technology and educational videos has yet to be fully developed, structured, and evaluated in home hospice care, it has shown promise to improve care in other settings. Therefore, this study aims to develop and evaluate a multi-component technology-based care intervention, i.e., Improving Home hospice Management of End of life issues through technology (I-HoME), that focuses on assessing and addressing patient symptoms and caregiver burden in the home hospice setting through synchronous live video visits and educational videos. The aim of the first phase of the project is to employ an iterative user-centered design process to develop I-HoME for home hospice patients and their caregivers prior to implementation.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Home hospice providers (N=10) and family caregivers (N=10) must be English speaking, 18 years of age or older, not blind, and either providing or receiving home hospice care. Home hospice patients (N=10) must be English speaking, 65 years of age or older, not blind, and enrolled in home hospice care.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients with a terminal diagnosis of dementia or patients who have cognitive impairment and unable to sign a written informed consent will be excluded.