Involving Nursing Home Residents and Their Families in Acute Care Transfer Decisions

This study addresses the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) area of interest related to development of decision support tools that bring patients, families and clinicians together to decide, in this instance, whether or not transfer from the nursing home (NH) to acute care is necessary and appropriate. The purposes of this study were 1) to develop an evidence-based decision aid addressing potentially avoidable transfers of residents from nursing homes to hospitals (preceded this protocol), and 2) to evaluate this decision aid in terms of acceptability to residents and families and its effect on the quality of transfer decisions. The primary hypotheses to be tested are: Hypothesis 1: Resident and family members in the intervention group will report greater preparation for decision making and less decisional conflict than those in the no treatment control group. Hypothesis 2: Residents and family members in the intervention group will demonstrate increased knowledge related to acute care transfer and less preference for acute care transfer than those in the no treatment control group.