The BEACHes Study.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Brief Engagement and Acceptance Coaching in Community and Hospice Settings (The BEACHeS study): Developing and pilot testing an evidence-based psychological intervention to enhance wellbeing and aid transition into palliative care.
IRAS ID
239683
Contact name
Nicholas Hulbert-Williams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Chester/U
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Finding out that cancer is not curable is difficult and upsetting, and support is needed to help patients to cope with their feelings and emotions. Our study aims to better understand what sort of support is helpful at this time. We will develop and test an intervention that we think can help people to better cope with their distress as they move into end of life care.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), distress is understood to be a normal reaction to a difficult situation, and ACT supports people to become more resilient and understanding when in distress. We will adapt existing ACT interventions for the palliative care setting. We will then deliver this intervention to 14 participants in a hospice day-care setting. We will recruit people who have found out that their cancer is incurable, and who have been referred to hospice services for support. We will ask participants to complete short questionnaires so that we can understand whether our intervention improves quality of life and reduces distress. Taking part will involve meeting with a psychologist every week for three weeks, and then once more as a follow-up appointment. Participants will be offered the opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences of receiving the intervention via a telephone interview.
We know that healthcare professionals currently use a range of different psychological approaches to support cancer patients, but we don’t yet know which ones work best, nor how or why they are helpful. Our study will use an approach that will help us to understand which aspects of interventions are helpful. Our study will result in a manualised version of our intervention, which we will make available for free so that as many people with advanced cancer can benefit as possible.
REC name
Wales REC 4
REC reference
18/WA/0087
Date of REC Opinion
25 Apr 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion