Background Person-centered care is critical for delivering high-quality diabetes care. Shared decision making (SDM) is central to person-centered care, and in diabetes care, it can improve decision quality, patient knowledge, and patient risk perception. Delivery of person-centered care can be facilitated with the use of patient decision aids (PtDAs). We developed MyDiabetesPlan, an interactive SDM and goal-setting PtDA designed to help individualize care priorities and support an interprofessional approach to SDM. Objective This study aims to assess the impact of MyDiabetesPlan on decisional conflict, diabetes distress, health-related quality of life, and patient assessment of chronic illness care at the individual patient level. Methods A two-step, parallel, 10-site cluster randomized controlled trial (first step: provider-directed implementation only; second step: both provider- and patient-directed implementation 6 months later) was conducted. Participants were adults 18 years and older with diabetes and 2 other comorbidities at 10 family health teams (FHTs) in Southwestern Ontario. FHTs were randomly assigned to MyDiabetesPlan (n=5) or control (n=5) through a computer-generated algorithm. MyDiabetesPlan was integrated into intervention practices, and clinicians (first step) followed by patients (second step) were trained on its use. Control participants received static generic Diabetes Canada resources. Patients were not blinded. Participants completed validated questionnaires at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. The primary outcome at the individual patient level was decisional conflict; secondary outcomes were diabetes distress, health-related quality of life, chronic illness care, and clinician intention to practice interprofessional SDM. Multilevel hierarchical regression models were used. Results At the end of the study, the intervention group (5 clusters, n=111) had a modest reduction in total decisional conflicts compared with the control group (5 clusters, n=102; −3.5, 95% CI −7.4 to 0.42). Although there was no difference in diabetes distress or health-related quality of life, there was an increase in patient assessment of chronic illness care (0.7, 95% CI 0.4 to 1.0). Conclusions Use of goal-setting decision aids modestly improved decision quality and chronic illness care but not quality of life. Our findings may be due to a gap between goal setting and attainment, suggesting a role for optimizing patient engagement and behavioral support. The next steps include clarifying the mechanisms by which decision aids impact outcomes and revising MyDiabetesPlan and its delivery. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02379078; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02379078

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BackgroundCare of patients with diabetes often occurs in the context of other chronic illness. Competing disease priorities and competing patient-physician priorities present challenges in the provision of care for the complex patient. Guideline implementation interventions to date do not acknowledge these intricacies of clinical practice. As a result, patients and providers are left overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer volume of recommendations and tasks. An individualized approach to the patient with diabetes and multiple comorbid conditions using shared decision-making (SDM) and goal setting has been advocated as a patient-centred approach that may facilitate prioritization of treatment options. Furthermore, incorporating interprofessional integration into practice may overcome barriers to implementation. However, these strategies have not been taken up extensively in clinical practice.ObjectivesTo systematically develop and test an interprofessional SDM and goal-setting toolkit for patients with diabetes and other chronic diseases, following the Knowledge to Action framework.Methods1. Feasibility study: Individual interviews with primary care physicians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and patients with diabetes will be conducted, exploring their experiences with shared decision-making and priority-setting, including facilitators and barriers, the relevance of a decision aid and toolkit for priority-setting, and how best to integrate it into practice.2. Toolkit development: Based on this data, an evidence-based multi-component SDM toolkit will be developed. The toolkit will be reviewed by content experts (primary care, endocrinology, geriatricians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, patients) for accuracy and comprehensiveness.3. Heuristic evaluation: A human factors engineer will review the toolkit and identify, list and categorize usability issues by severity.4. Usability testing: This will be done using cognitive task analysis.5. Iterative refinement: Throughout the development process, the toolkit will be refined through several iterative cycles of feedback and redesign.DiscussionInterprofessional shared decision-making regarding priority-setting with the use of a decision aid toolkit may help prioritize care of individuals with multiple comorbid conditions. Adhering to principles of user-centered design, we will develop and refine a toolkit to assess the feasibility of this approach.

Cognitive decline is often undetectable in the early stages of accelerated vascular aging. Attentional processes are particularly affected in older adults with white matter hyperintensities (WMH), although specific neurovascular mechanisms have not been elucidated. We aimed to identify differences in attention-related neurofunctional activation and behavior between adults with and without WMH. Older adults with moderate to severe WMH (n = 18, mean age = 70 years), age-matched adults (n = 28, mean age = 72), and healthy younger adults (n = 19, mean age = 25) performed a modified flanker task during multi-echo blood oxygenation level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Task-related activation was assessed using a weighted-echo approach. Healthy older adults had more widespread response and higher amplitude of activation compared to WMH adults in fronto-temporal and parietal cortices. Activation associated with processing speed was absent in the WMH group, suggesting attention-related activation deficits that may be a consequence of cerebral small vessel disease. WMH adults had greater executive contrast activation in the precuneous and posterior cingulate gyrus compared to HYA, despite no performance benefits, reinforcing the network dysfunction theory in WMH.

But treat judiciously

Background/contextUnnecessary laboratory testing leads to considerable healthcare costs. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), commonly ordered with alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN), commonly ordered with creatinine (Cr), often add little value to patient management at significant cost. We undertook a choosing wisely based quality improvement initiative to reduce the frequency of testing.ObjectivesTo reduce the ratio of AST/ALT and BUN/Cr to less than 5% for all inpatient and outpatient test orders.MeasuresAbsolute number and ratio of AST/ALT and BUN/Cr; AST, ALT, BUN and Cr tests per 100 hospital days; projected annualised cost savings and monthly acute inpatient bed days.ImprovementsWe created guidelines for appropriate indications of AST and BUN testing, provided education with audit and feedback and removed AST and BUN from institutional order sets.Impact/resultsThe ratios of AST/ALT and BUN/Cr decreased significantly over the study period (0.37 to 0.14, 0.57 to 0.14, respectively), although the goal of 0.05 was not achieved due to a delay in adopting the choosing wisely strategies during the study time period by some inpatient units. The number of tests per 100 hospital days decreased from 20 to 7 AST (95% CI 19 to 20.5, 5.6 to 8.7, p<0.001) and from 72 to 17 BUN (95% CI 70 to 73.4, 16.6 to 22.9, p<0.001). The initiative resulted in a projected annualised cost savings of C$221 749.DiscussionA significant decrease in the AST/ALT and BUN/Cr ratios can be achieved with a multimodal approach and will result in substantial healthcare savings.

Determining decision-making capacity is part of everyday business for health care professionals working with older adults. We used a modified Delphi approach to develop an inclusive curriculum for a capacity education e-tool with global application and clinical relevance to a range of disciplines. The tool comprised: (i) 25 questions forming a “pre-test” for the adaptive and personalized e-Learning platform; (ii) a learning module based on the participant’s response to the “pre-test”; (iii) a “post-test” (the same baseline 25 questions) to test knowledge translation. The tool was tested on 31 health care professionals across Israel (8), Canada (15), and Australia (8) from the following disciplines: General Practitioners (GP) (19), Internal Medicine (1), Palliative Care GP (2); Palliative Care Physician (2), Geriatrician (2); and one of each: Psychologist, Occupational Therapist, Psychiatrist, Aged Care Researcher, and Aged Care Pharmacist. The mean baseline pre-test score was 19.1/25 (S.D. =1.61; range 15–22) and post-test score 21.7/25 (S.D.= 1.42; range 18–24); with a highly significant improvement in test scores (paired t-test P &lt; 0.0001; t=10.81 on 30 df). This is the first such pilot study to demonstrate that generic capacity principles can be taught to health care professionals from different disciplines regardless of jurisdiction.

BackgroundCompeting health concerns present real obstacles to people living with diabetes and other chronic diseases as well as to their primary care providers. Guideline implementation interventions rarely acknowledge this, leaving both patients and providers feeling overwhelmed by the volume of recommended actions. Interprofessional (IP) shared decision-making (SDM) with the use of decision aids may help to set treatment priorities. We developed an evidence-based SDM intervention for patients with diabetes and other conditions that was framed by the IP-SDM model and followed a user-centered approach. Our objective in the present study is to pilot an IP-SDM and goal-setting toolkit following the Knowledge-to-Action Framework to assess (1) intervention fidelity and the feasibility of conducting a larger trial and (2) impact on decisional conflict, diabetes distress, health-related quality of life and patient assessment of chronic illness care.Methods/DesignA two-step, parallel-group, clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted, with the primary goal being to assess intervention fidelity and the feasibility of conducting a larger RCT. The first step is a provider-directed implementation only; the second (after a 6-month delay) involves both provider- and patient-directed implementation. Half of the clusters will be assigned to receive the IP-SDM toolkit, and the other will be assigned to be mailed a diabetes guidelines summary. Individual interviews with patients, their family members and health care providers will be conducted upon trial completion to explore toolkit use. A secondary purpose of this trial is to gather estimates of the toolkit’s impact on decisional conflict. Secondary outcomes include diabetes distress, quality of life and chronic illness care, which will be assessed on the basis of patient-completed questionnaires of validated scales at baseline and at 6 and 12 months. Multilevel hierarchical regression models will be used to account for the clustered nature of the data.DiscussionAn individualized approach to patients with multiple chronic conditions using SDM and goal setting is a desirable strategy for achieving guideline-concordant treatment in a patient-centered fashion. Our pilot trial will provide insights regarding strategies for the routine implementation of such interventions in clinical practice, and it will offer an assessment of the impact of this approach.Trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02379078. Date of Registration: 11 February 2015.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13063-015-0797-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.