AzTrials
AzTrials

Clinician Patient CommunicationNCT01575886

Enhancing Teachable Moment Communication for Smoking Cessation and Weight Management

A study testing Teachable Moment Communication Process in people with Clinician Patient Communication and Smoking Cessation, run by Case Western Reserve University at 1 site in United States.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
Search all trials

Trial summary

The goal of this study is to test an intervention that teaches clinicians to integrate the use of 'teachable moments' with the key skills of motivational interviewing tailored to address smoking and weight management in the primary care outpatient visit setting. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 to 70 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
What is being tested?
Teachable Moment Communication Process
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
840 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
Jul 2010to Feb 2013
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
None posted in the registry

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 to 70 years
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • Patients visiting a clinician participating in the study on data collection days.
  • For data collection Time 1 and 2, patients who report smoking at least 1 cigarette per day.
  • For data collect times 3 and 4, patients who have a BMI > 30 or patients who have a BMI >25 and self-reporting any one of the following chronic conditions: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease or diabetes.

Who cannot join

  • Inability to comprehend the invitation to participate in the study in English or Spanish
  • No access to a telephone and no mailing address to complete follow up surveys.

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

United States1 site
  • Case Western Reserve University

    Cleveland, Ohio, 44106

Other trials in United States

About this study

Official title: Enhancing Teachable Moment Communication for Smoking Cessation and Weight

The goal of this study is to test an intervention that teaches clinicians to integrate the use of 'teachable moments' with the key skills of motivational interviewing tailored to address smoking and weight management in the primary care outpatient visit setting.

Read the detailed description

A large burden of cancer morbidity and mortality is potentially preventable by changes in personal health behaviors. Health behavior advice (HBA) by primary care physicians, who provide basic health care to most Americans, holds great promise as a strategy to alter cancer-related health behaviors and to reduce morbidity and mortality. One potentially powerful strategy is the use of illness visits as a 'teachable moment'(TM) for health behavior change. Our in-depth analysis of audio recorded physician-patient interactions has led to new discoveries of the communication elements of a TM. First, effective TM's involve linking a health behavior to a salient patient problem and positioning the health behavior as a problem. Persuasion is accomplished by suggesting that changing the health behavior will improve the patient's salient concern. If done skillfully, the patient accepts the portrayal of the health behavior as a relevant problem and exhibits uptake of the health behavior change talk, possibly expressing a commitment to change. Our data reveal that TMs occur in 20% of health behavior discussions between physician and patient. More frequent (43%) , however, are TM 'attempts' which fail to engage the patient. These attempts lack two essential aspects of good patient-centered advice 1) eliciting the patient's readiness to change and 2) responding in alignment with the patient's expressed stage of change. We also observed 'missed opportunities' (20%) where the health behavior advice failed to link to a salient patient concern.

Therefore, the goal of this randomized trial is to test an intervention that teaches clinicians to integrate the use of TMs with the key skills of motivational interviewing tailored to address smoking and weight management in the outpatient visit setting. This goal will be accomplished using a group randomized trial of 32 clinicians (1152 patients). The initial Teachable Moment Communication Process (TMCP) intervention will focus on smoking cessation as the health behavior topic. After the initial intervention is evaluated, the clinicians assigned to the control group will receive a revised TMCP intervention with a focus on weight management. The TMCP intervention involves multiple modalities including skills-based training, practice with standardized patients and on-site coaching. Audio recordings of visits with patients who smoke or are obese will be used to assess both intervention and control clinicians' health behavior change strategies at baseline and post intervention. Patient surveys will be used to assess the effect of the observed health behavior change strategies on immediate and short-term patient outcomes. Leveraging clinicians' naturally-occurring health behavior change strategies by fostering the development of more effective communication skills has great potential to enhance patient health behavior change. This study will test this strategy and generate rich data about its effectiveness and how it is tailored by physicians in practice for both smoking and weight management; two important risk factors for cancer and other devastating chronic diseases.

Being tested
Teachable Moment Communication Process
Keywords
clinician patient communication, smoking cessation, weight management, primary care, health behavior change advice
Medical subject headings
Smoking Cessation

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • Teachable Moment Communication ProcessOther

    The Teachable Moment Communication Process intervention is designed to teach clinicians: (1) the skills necessary to recognize and foster teachable moments in clinical encounters, (2) strategies to effectively elicit the patients' perspective on health behavior change, and express their alignment with that perspective, and (3) the ability to respond to the patient in a non-confrontational manner while providing brief advice appropriate to the patient's expressed level of readiness to change. The Teachable Moment Communication Process intervention consists of two, 3-hour educational training sessions including didactic presentation, skill demonstration through video examples, skills practices with standardized patients, and feedback from peers and the trainers.

Study groups in NCT01575886
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Smoking cessation interventionExperimentalThis group receives the teachable moment communication process intervention focused on smoking cessation and contributes data at baseline (Time 1) and post intervention (Time 2).
Receives: Other: Teachable Moment Communication Process
Delayed intervention groupOtherThis group serves as the comparison group for the evaluation of the smoking cessation intervention at Time 1 and Time 2 data collection to complete the group randomized trial. This group of clinicians then has Time 3 data collection focused on weight management receives a revised intervention focused on teachable moment communication for weight management and has Time 4 data collected to evaluate the teachable moment for weight management training as a pre-post design.
Receives: Other: Teachable Moment Communication Process

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. performance of the elements of the teachable moment communication process

    Analysis of the audio recorded visit is used to assess the performance of each of the key elements of the teachable moment communication process.

    Measured: evaluated at time of observed/audio recorded visit; visits are evaluated between 2 weeks and 3 months after clinician exposure to the educational intervention

  2. incremental behavior change for smoking

    A 15-item self report measure of small behavior changes antecedent to smoking cessation. The measure is assessed prior to the visit and then 6-weeks after the observed visit and a change score is computed.

    Measured: 6 weeks

Secondary outcomes (1)
  1. duration of the visit

    the amount of time spent face to face with the clinician during the observed visit.

    Measured: immediate

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted12 Apr 2012 (estimated)
  2. Study startJul 2010
  3. Primary completionDec 2011
  4. Study completionFeb 2013

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Health services research
Allocation
Randomised
Intervention model
Parallel groups
Masking
Double blind
Who is masked
Participant, Outcomes assessor
Enrolment
840 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT01575886
Sponsor's protocol ID
R01CA105292_ETM
Other IDs
R01CA105292
Status last verified
Dec 2021
First submitted
6 Apr 2012
Last updated
12 Jan 2022
Results posted
No
Data monitoring committee
No

Publications

  • Flocke SA, Antognoli E, Step MM, Marsh S, Parran T, Mason MJ. A Teachable Moment Communication Process for smoking cessation talk: description of a group randomized clinician-focused intervention. BMC Health Serv Res. 2012 May 3;12:109. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-12-109.

    PubMed 22554310

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing Teachable Moment Communication Process in people with Clinician Patient Communication and Smoking Cessation, run by Case Western Reserve University at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 3 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 12 Jan 2022. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

performance of the elements of the teachable moment communication process (time frame: evaluated at time of observed/audio recorded visit; visits are evaluated between 2 weeks and 3 months after clinician exposure to the educational intervention). The study lists 2 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT01575886, which also lists 1 linked publication.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 12 Jan 2022.

Free account

Log in to keep searching

You’ve used your 3 free searches. AzTrials is free: log in or create a free account to keep searching clinical trials and save the ones you want to follow.

Create a free accountLog in