A Feasibility Study of Death Education Intervention for Family Caregivers of Advanced Cancer Patients

Starting soon · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Palliative Care, Advanced Cancer, Family Caregivers

In brief

Advanced cancer is the leading cause of death in the world and China. Family caregivers, as the closest individuals to advanced cancer patients, suffer from a range of psychological and spiritual issues due to patients' impending death. Various types of death education interventions have been developed to assist individuals in understanding the meaning of life and death and adapting to dying to address psychological and spiritual issues. However, these interventions have predominantly focused on advanced cancer patients only, with a significant gap in support for family caregivers. A mixed methods feasibility study will be conducted. A convenience sample of at least 30 family caregivers will be recruited. Participants will receive four 60-minute sessions, flexibly scheduled within a four-week period according to each participant's conditions. The researcher will be trained to deliver the intervention through individual face-to-face sessions in the oncology ward meeting room of the same hospital in phase I. The primary outcome will be feasibility (time to complete the recruitment, eligibility rate, recruitment rate, retention rate, attendance rate, acceptability rate). Secondary outcomes will be measured for preliminary intervention effectiveness on family caregivers' communication with patients on death, anxiety, depression, spiritual well-being, attitudes towards death, and quality of life after collecting the demographic information and written consent forms, and post-intervention. A descriptive qualitative evaluation will be conducted with 12 family caregivers to explore their experience of participating in the intervention by another researcher. The qualitative data in phase II will be audio-taped and transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo 14 through thematic analysis. The quantitative data will be entered in SPSS version 29.0. Descriptive statistics will be used to summarise the profiles of participants and outcomes.

Key facts

Study ID
NCT07367984
Run by
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
People needed
30
Starts
2026-03-01
Expected to finish
2026-08-31
Last updated by the study team
2026-01-26

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

Where it is running

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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