Shared Decision Making for PTSD in Primary Care

NCT ID: NCT04504149

Last Updated: 2022-12-06

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: WITHDRAWN
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2022-10-03
• Study Completion Date: 2022-11-30

Brief Summary

PTSD is one of the most common mental health conditions affecting Veterans and is associated with significant burden. Highly effective treatments exist for PTSD, evidence-based psychotherapies, but very few Veterans receive them. Although VA has trained over 8,500 providers in evidence-based psychotherapies for PTSD over the past 10 years, only 6% of the 650,000 VHA patients with PTSD receive an evidence-based psychotherapy. It is critical to connect Veterans with the most effective PTSD treatments and done so in a way that is Veteran-centered. Shared decision making is a patient-centered approach to choosing healthcare treatment options. It has been shown to increase patients' motivation for treatment and ability to stay in treatment long enough to get benefit. It has also been shown to help providers align their practice with evidence-based guidelines. This proposal will refine and pilot test a shared decision making intervention for PTSD to be used in VA primary care clinics, where the vast majority of Veterans with PTSD are treated.

Detailed Description

Background: Over 1 million Veterans have PTSD and most (80% or more) do not receive first-line treatments, evidence-based psychotherapies, despite significant VA investment to increase access to these treatments. Clinicians often struggle to engage Veterans in evidence-based psychotherapies because they can be emotionally challenging treatments. Engagement could be catalyzed by mental health providers integrated into primary care (i.e., VA's Primary Care-Mental Health Integration, or PC-MHI) to maximize the reach of engagement efforts beyond specialty PTSD settings. Shared decision making, a process by which the patient and provider discuss treatment options, weigh benefits and risks, and select a treatment that meets the patient's needs, addresses known patient and provider barriers to evidence-based psychotherapies, including knowledge, self-efficacy, and trust. However, no study has examined shared decision making for PTSD in primary care. The proposal will address this knowledge gap by developing and refining a shared decision making intervention for PTSD, Patient Readiness for Improvement through Motivation, Engagement, and Decision-making (PRIMED), using input from Veterans with diverse perspectives, PC-MHI providers, and VA operational partners to optimize integration of shared decision making into clinical care. The investigators will collect acceptability and feasibility data to support an application for a future effectiveness-implementation trial.

Significance/Impact: Dr. Chen's proposed research addresses three HSR&D and VA priorities: 1) increase engagement and retention of Veterans in evidence-based PTSD treatments, 2) advance health services research methods, specifically implementation science and user-centered design, which focuses on thorough integration of Veteran and frontline provider input, and 3) support suicide prevention efforts through effective treatment of PTSD, a major risk factor for suicide.

Innovation: The proposed project will promote significant change in current VA clinical practice. PC-MHI providers typically refer out patients with PTSD and defer discussions about treatment options to specialty providers. This proposal will help PC-MHI providers use a formal engagement strategy, shared decision making, to improve patients' knowledge of first-line PTSD treatments and to build motivation for care.

Specific Aims: 1) Refine PRIMED using user-centered design methods and diverse Veterans' perspectives, 2) Beta test PRIMED in one rural and one urban PC-MHI clinic to optimize integration into clinical workflow and achieve satisfactory acceptability and feasibility across a range of settings, 3) Conduct a small, randomized pilot trial (N=40) of PRIMED vs. usual care in two VA PC-MHI clinics to assess the feasibility of study procedures, which will inform a future larger trial.

Methodology: In Aim 1, Dr. Chen will conduct qualitative interviews using user-centered design methods with 25 VA PC-MHI patients with PTSD, oversampling women veterans and racial/ethnic minority veterans, to refine the PRIMED intervention protocol. In Aim 2, Dr. Chen will use rapid, iterative beta-testing with approximately 20 patients to optimize the acceptability and feasibility of delivering PRIMED in the clinical setting and its integration into clinical workflow across varied settings (small rural clinics and large urban clinics). In Aim 3, Dr. Chen will conduct a pilot randomized feasibility trial (N=40) to assess the feasibility of recruiting and randomizing Veterans and measuring treatment engagement and clinical outcomes.

Next Steps/Implementation: The research and training activities will prepare the nominee to conduct a multi-site, hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation trial to test the effectiveness of PRIMED for increasing receipt of first-line PTSD treatments and to begin to assess implementation barriers and facilitators. Future work to move this research into practice would involve collaborating with operational partners to improve VA SAIL performance measures in mental health, which are weighted to encourage evidence-based psychotherapies.

Conditions

PTSD

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NA
• Intervention Model: SINGLE_GROUP
• Primary Study Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

PRIMED

Shared decision making session

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Patient Readiness for Improvement through Motivation, Engagement, and Decision-making for PTSD

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

A primary care-based shared decision making intervention

Usual Care

The investigators will characterize usual care using chart review and administrative data to identify medications (prescribed, filled), number of mental health sessions received, types of providers seen, and the content of treatment sessions as captured in chart notes.

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

Patient Readiness for Improvement through Motivation, Engagement, and Decision-making for PTSD

A primary care-based shared decision making intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Other Intervention Names

PRIMED

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Adult VA patients 18 years who have a documented initial visit to Primary Care-Mental Health Integration for PTSD in the past 90 days at VA Puget Sound

Exclusion Criteria

• Cognitive impairment (e.g., moderate or severe history of traumatic brain injury, dementia)
• Unstable acute psychiatric conditions (e.g., current high-risk for suicide)

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

VA Office of Research and Development

FED

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Jessica A. Chen, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

VA Puget Sound Health Care System Seattle Division, Seattle, WA

Locations

VA Puget Sound Health Care System Seattle Division, Seattle, WA

Seattle, Washington, United States

Countries

United States

Other Identifiers

CDX 20-002

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id