Critical Care PR COS - PPI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of a core outcome set for trials of physical rehabilitation after critical illness: What outcomes are important to patients and caregivers?
IRAS ID
233439
Contact name
Bronwen Connolly
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
18/NE/0018, North East Newcastle and Tyneside1
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 29 days
Research summary
People who have experienced a stay in the intensive care unit often suffer physical problems as they recover. These may include muscle weakness, difficulty with day-to-day activities such as getting in and out of bed or walking, and reduced fitness.
A large number of research studies have looked at how best to prevent these problems, and how to treat them if they occur. One way is by using physical rehabilitation such as intensive physiotherapy whilst in hospital, or exercise classes at home. However, there is a lot of variation in the way researchers measure the effect of physical rehabilitation in their studies – the ‘outcomes’ are all different. For example, some researchers might measure how far a person can walk, some measure muscle strength and some measure how breathless a person becomes with exercise. This makes it difficult to compare studies and determine the overall benefit of treatment.
Establishing a ‘core outcome set’ (COS) is one way to help improve this. A COS are outcomes that have been agreed as priority to measure in all research studies for a particular condition. The aim of this study is to find out which outcomes are important to patients and caregivers to include in a COS for research studies involving physical rehabilitation after critical illness.
To do this, this study has two Parts – in Part 1, we would like to interview former patients and caregivers about their experiences of recovering from critical illness and their intensive care stay, and what outcomes they feel would be important in relation to physical rehabilitation. These interviews will be done over the telephone, and expected to take around 30 minutes. In Part 2, patients and caregivers will be invited to take part in a series of surveys, called a Delphi process, to score how important these outcomes are.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NE/0018
Date of REC Opinion
9 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion