Patient navigator intervention seen as safe, useful for children newly diagnosed with CKD
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Researchers found no differences between groups in the child’s self-rated health.
- The next step is to conduct implementation studies to assess potential adoption, fidelity and barriers.
PHILADELPHIA — The efficacy of patient navigators may not improve the self-rated health of children with chronic kidney disease; however, caregivers gain skills from the program, according to research presented at ASN Kidney Week.
“I believe the findings have reassured us that the intervention is safe and is potentially useful for certain groups of patients, such as families [with children] who were newly diagnosed with CKD and those from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds,” Germaine Wong, MBBS, PhD, of The University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia, told Healio.
In the multicenter, randomized control trial, researchers randomly assigned children with CKD and low socioeconomic backgrounds to either receive immediate patient navigation or be placed on a 6-month waitlist. Children were between the ages of 0 to 16 years.
Primary outcome was the self-rated health of the patient at 6 months after randomization. Researchers also thematically analyzed interviews to understand the caregivers’ perspectives.
Researchers screened 398 children to enroll 162 children into the immediate or waitlist groups. Mean age was 8.8 years. Wong said the intervention was intended to be delivered in person but was implemented largely by teleconferencing due to the prolonged period of COVID-19 lockdown in Australia.
“Therefore, the dose, duration and modality of the delivery of the patient navigation program were not exactly what it was intended to be. However, the findings are not unexpected,” Wong said.
Researchers found no differences between groups in the child’s self-rated health. They identified five common themes: easing mental strain, facilitating care coordination, strengthening capacity to provide care, reinforcing care collaborations and alleviating family tensions.
“While the quantitative estimates did not show a significant difference of the benefits observed between the intervention and the waitlist arm[s], many participants who had the intervention felt it was useful in helping the patients, families and siblings through difficult times. The patient navigators provided support and strategies for families to deal with the complexities, stressors and the psychological burden of having a child with kidney disease,” Wong said.
Wong said the next step is to conduct implementation studies to assess potential adoption, fidelity, barriers, facilitators, scalability and the cost-benefits ratio of translating the research in clinical settings.
“While we did not show any significant quantitative benefits, the qualitative findings are encouraging and therefore, I hope this intervention will close the inequity gap in access to quality among the most vulnerable in real-life clinical settings,” Wong said.
Reference:
Wong G, et al. TH-PO1118. Presented at: ASN Kidney Week; Nov. 1-5, 2023; Philadelphia.
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts