Provision Of Psychological support to People in Intensive care (v1.0)

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Psychological Outcomes following a nurse-led Preventative Psychological Intervention for critically ill patients (POPPI) cluster-randomised controlled trial

  • IRAS ID

    173772

  • Contact name

    Kathryn Rowan

  • Contact email

    poppi@icnarc.org

  • Sponsor organisation

    Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 5 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    POPPI - Provision Of Psychological support to People in Intensive care

    Many patients suffer distress whilst in an intensive care unit (ICU) and can have a poor psychological recovery after leaving hospital. This could include suffering from frightening flashbacks to intensive care - a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). POPPI aims to assess whether implementing a nurse-led psychological intervention can improve patients’ psychological recovery after a stay in an ICU and see if this approach is cost-effective. There are four parts to the intervention:

    1. An education package to train ICU staff to carry out parts 2-4;
    2. Creating a less stressful environment in the ICU;
    3. Assessing patients’ psychological distress in the ICU using the Intensive care Psychological Assessment Tool; and
    4. Carrying out three stress support sessions for very distressed patients (delivered by specially trained POPPI nurses).

    POPPI is a ‘cluster randomised controlled trial’ to be conducted in 2,904 patients recruited from 24 adult ICUs. ICUs will be randomly allocated to either delivering the intervention or their usual care (control group) for 11 months. For the first five months, all sites will deliver usual care. The Intervention group will undergo training and then deliver the intervention, whilst the control group will continue to deliver usual care for the remaining six months.

    At the end of the trial, the psychological recovery of patients in the two groups (intervention and control) will be compared by measuring patient-reported PTSD symptom severity six months after recruitment onto the study. The costs of the intervention and patients’ quality of life will also be compared to measure the cost-effectiveness.

    POPPI in funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research Programme. For more information contact the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre Clinical Trials Unit (www.icnarc.org).

  • REC name

    South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    15/SC/0287

  • Date of REC Opinion

    15 May 2015

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion