Nurse Parental Support Using a Mobile App in Symptom Management for CMC

Study Purpose

Parents of children with medical complexity (CMC) are suffering from high level of stress. These CMC get multisystem diseases, including severe neurologic conditions or cancer, resulting in potential premature death. They experience one or more physical and psychological symptoms at one time, which seriously affect their quality of life and increase their health services utilization. Parents may lack confidence in their abilities when managing their child's symptoms. Literature suggested that increasing parental self-efficacy in managing their child's symptoms could improve child's health status. Home-based nursing services for the CMC and parents are available in Hong Kong. However, the service faces challenges because of serious nursing workforce shortage and the recent coronavirus pandemic. Nurse parental support in symptom management using a proactive mobile health App is an alternative method considered more feasible to continue home-based support for the CMC and parents. This proposed RCT will test the effects of a nurse-led mobile App for enhancing parental self-efficacy in symptom management for CMC. A repeated-measures, two-group design will be used to evaluate the effects between intervention and wait-listed control groups by comparing the study group receiving nurse support using a mobile App, and the wait-listed control group receiving usual community care for 96 randomly selected parents over a three-month follow-up. Primary outcome is parental self-efficacy. Secondary outcomes include children's symptom burden and health services utilization. These factors will be measured before intervention, immediately after intervention and three-month after intervention. The effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated by comparing the primary outcome at three-month after intervention across the two study groups using ANCOVA with control for the pre-test value of parental self-efficacy. Generalized estimating equation will be used to address secondary objectives regarding the effectiveness of the mobile App as compared to the control on secondary outcomes from T1 to T3 with appropriate link function. It is hypothesized that nurse support using the mobile App is more effective than usual community care in enhancing parental self-efficacy in symptom management for their CMC at three-month after intervention.

Recruitment Criteria

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Healthy volunteers are participants who do not have a disease or condition, or related conditions or symptoms

No
Study Type

An interventional clinical study is where participants are assigned to receive one or more interventions (or no intervention) so that researchers can evaluate the effects of the interventions on biomedical or health-related outcomes.


An observational clinical study is where participants identified as belonging to study groups are assessed for biomedical or health outcomes.


Searching Both is inclusive of interventional and observational studies.

Interventional
Eligible Ages 2 Years - 18 Years
Gender All
More Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

The eligible criteria for parents are: 1. parent of a child with medical complexity aged 2-18. 2. having a Smartphone. 3. able to communicate in Chinese and read Chinese. 4. living with his/her child at home.

Exclusion Criteria:

The exclusion criteria for parents are. 1. a reported mental health disorder. 2. engaging in other structured programs related to symptom management 3) living in an area with no internet coverage.

Trial Details

Trial ID:

This trial id was obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, providing information on publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants with locations in all 50 States and in 196 countries.

NCT05765643
Phase

Phase 1: Studies that emphasize safety and how the drug is metabolized and excreted in humans.

Phase 2: Studies that gather preliminary data on effectiveness (whether the drug works in people who have a certain disease or condition) and additional safety data.

Phase 3: Studies that gather more information about safety and effectiveness by studying different populations and different dosages and by using the drug in combination with other drugs.

Phase 4: Studies occurring after FDA has approved a drug for marketing, efficacy, or optimal use.

N/A
Lead Sponsor

The sponsor is the organization or person who oversees the clinical study and is responsible for analyzing the study data.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Principal Investigator

The person who is responsible for the scientific and technical direction of the entire clinical study.

Lam Winsome, PhD
Principal Investigator Affiliation The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Agency Class

Category of organization(s) involved as sponsor (and collaborator) supporting the trial.

Other
Overall Status Recruiting
Countries Hong Kong
Conditions

The disease, disorder, syndrome, illness, or injury that is being studied.

Child With Cancer, Muscular Atrophy, Child With Cerebral Palsy, Child With Medical Complexity
Arms & Interventions

Arms

Experimental: Nurse parental support in symptom management using a mobile health App over 3 months

No Intervention: Wait-listed control

Parents in this group can join the usual community social or health care services as usual.

Interventions

Other: - Nurse parental support in symptom management using a mobile health App

Parents in this group will receive a mobile App that includes health assessment, monitoring, health education and nurse support using phone calls over a 3-month period

Contact a Trial Team

If you are interested in learning more about this trial, find the trial site nearest to your location and contact the site coordinator via email or phone. We also strongly recommend that you consult with your healthcare provider about the trials that may interest you and refer to our terms of service below.

International Sites

School of Nursing, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Status

Recruiting

Address

School of Nursing

Hong Kong, , 852

Site Contact

Winsome LAM, PhD

[email protected]

8522766 #4291

Kowloon, Hong Kong

Status

Completed

Address

School of Nursing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Kowloon, , 852

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