Intervention for Depression Among Palliative Care Patients and their Families: Training Program for Care Staff

INTERVENTION: This study will be investigating the efficacy of a four‐session training program for palliative care staff that aims to improve the detection, monitoring and management of depression in people receiving palliative care. The four 90‐min sessions, delivered over approximately a month to groups of 8‐10 staff members, will aim to train staff to better understand depression, understand masked depression, monitor and screen for depression and improve their communication skills and support for depressed patients and their family members. CONDITION: Depression PRIMARY OUTCOME: Depression detection and referrals will improve in primary and specialist health services. This will me monitored by referral rates given from primary care physicians and participating staff who will be asked to keep records of referrals which will be validated by examination of files Improvement in knowledge and specific skills of staff in working with palliative care patients using semi‐structured interviews with managers and families. Improvement in staff's detection of depression among people under their care by indicating which of a list of participating care recipients they perceive to be to be currently depressed. This will be evaluated by a comparison with diagnoses made by a clinical psychologist using a structured clinical interview (SCID) on a randomly selected sample of 50% of participating patients to determine the presence or absence of Major Depressive Disorder or Minor Depressive Disorder. Improvement on Staff Knowledge of Depression Scale Staff improvement on Attitudes to Depression Questionnaire Staff improvement on Barriers to Care of Depression Scale Staff improvement on Scale of Performance as assessed by staff managers Staff improvement on Self‐Efficacy in Working with Depression Scale SECONDARY OUTCOME: Family members will be interviewed to determine the change in mental health of palliative care patients as well as changes to patients and their quality of life as a result of changes in staff practices INCLUSION CRITERIA: Palliative care facility staff (direct carers/care assistants and senior staff including Division 1 and 2 nurses, and other allied health professionals) and family members of patients of palliative care facilities