Clinical trial · Interventional
Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication
Improving Breaking Bad News in Pediatrics by Simulated Communication: The Prospective Randomized Controlled SimCom Study
- Source
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- Retrieved
- Sep 8, 2026
- Layer
- normalized (units and labels harmonized; values unchanged)
- Run
- ING-CLINICALTRIALS-20260908-000001
Summary
Brief summary (as posted)
Breaking bad news, especially a death notice, is an essential part of the medical profes-sional communication. Being inadequately trained in those skills this may result in un-pleasant psychosocial consequences for everyone involved. This prospective, single-center, randomized controlled trial evaluated the delivery of a death notice to simulation parents out of the perspective of these parents (professional actors), the participants (students) and by video analysis. The simulation patient has prior unexpectedly died during a simulated resuscitation. The intervention group broke the bad news after receiving a short communication
Conditions
Conditions (3)
Free-text conditions as registered, with the CancerIndex entity they were reconciled to and the match type.
| Condition (as posted) | Mapped entity | Match | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Communication | — | UNRESOLVED | — |
| End of Life | — | UNRESOLVED | — |
| Pediatric ALL | Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia | ALIAS | 0.90 |
Interventions
Interventions (1)
| Intervention | Type | Mapped drug | Match |
|---|---|---|---|
| communication training | Other | — | UNRESOLVED |
Design
Arms and outcomes
Arms (2)
- type
- NO_INTERVENTION
- label
- Control
- description
- no communication training prior to simulation scenario
- type
- OTHER
- label
- Communication-Trained
- description
- communication training prior to simulation scenario
- interventionNames
- Other: communication training
Primary outcomes (1)
- measure
- score by simulation parents
- timeFrame
- up to 1 hour after the simulation
- description
- evaluation of breaking bad news by simulation parents, via a newly created questionnaire, measured in points, minimum score of zero points, maximum score of 69 points, the higher the score the better the outcome
Eligibility
Eligibility (as posted)
- Sex
- All
- Minimum age
- 18 Years
- Maximum age
- 75 Years
Show eligibility criteria text
Inclusion Criteria: * Medical students, enrolled at the Medical University of Vienna. * Successful completion the mandatory basic life support training "Block 16" in the third year of medical training and * Successful completion of the mandatory communication seminar "Ärztliche Gesprächsführung B" also in the third year of medical training. * Obtained written informed consent. Exclusion Criteria: * quality of the obtained video recordings were unsatisfactory and not usable for analysis * unmet inclusion criteria
References
Publications (5)
- BACKGROUNDBabu TA. Breaking bad news in the paediatric ICU: need for ethical practice. Indian J Med Ethics. 2013 Oct-Dec;10(4):278-9. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2013.085. No abstract available. PMID 24152358
- BACKGROUNDBittner-Fagan H, Davis J, Savoy M. Improving Patient Safety: Improving Communication. FP Essent. 2017 Dec;463:27-33. PMID 29210557
- BACKGROUNDBrock KE, Tracewski M, Allen KE, Klick J, Petrillo T, Hebbar KB. Simulation-Based Palliative Care Communication for Pediatric Critical Care Fellows. Am J Hosp Palliat Care. 2019 Sep;36(9):820-830. doi: 10.1177/1049909119839983. Epub 2019 Apr 11. PMID 30974949
- BACKGROUNDde Moura Villela EF, Bastos LK, de Almeida WS, Pereira AO, de Paula Rocha MS, de Oliveira FM, Bollela VR. Effects on Medical Students of Longitudinal Small-Group Learning about Breaking Bad News. Perm J. 2020;24:19.157. doi: 10.7812/TPP/19.157. Epub 2020 Feb 14. PMID 32097117
- BACKGROUNDChumpitazi CE, Rees CA, Chumpitazi BP, Hsu DC, Doughty CB, Lorin MI. Creation and Assessment of a Bad News Delivery Simulation Curriculum for Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows. Cureus. 2016 May 1;8(5):e595. doi: 10.7759/cureus.595. PMID 27335708