SBIR-STTR Award

Computer Training in End-of-Life Care for Rural Nurses' Aides
Award last edited on: 11/13/06

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
NIH : NINR
Total Award Amount
$876,732
Award Phase
2
Solicitation Topic Code
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Principal Investigator
Mary A Toborg

Company Information

Toborg Associates Inc

1129 Twentieth Street NW Suite 108
Washington, DC 20036
   (202) 776-0112
   mtoborg@toborg.net
   www.toborg.net
Location: Single
Congr. District: 00
County: District of Columbia

Phase I

Contract Number: 1R43NR008813-01A1
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase I year
2004
Phase I Amount
$126,762
Death comes to each of us. More and more, Americans reach the end of their lives in institutions. As the cost of nursing escalates, facilities that care for the dying increasingly turn to less expensive, and often untrained, nurses' aides (NAs) to provide for the needs of the dying. Quality end-of-life care represents an urgent national priority. Rural America contains not just a disproportionate share of the nation's elderly but also a higher age adjusted rate of mortality at every stage of life. Rural communities also possess unique cultural attributes that shape the experience of health care at the end of life. Toborg Associates proposes to develop a computer-based training (CBT) to train rural NAs in end-of-life care. Using focus groups and key informant interviews, staff will define the perceptions and attitudes of NAs in rural communities to issues related to the terminally ill and care at the end-of-life. They will develop a prototype web based CBT module to train NAs in end-of-life care for the terminally ill and conduct a feasibility test of the prototype module with up to 5 groups of a total of 50 rural NA who work with the terminally ill. Toborg Associates will describe in a monograph the findings and the potential of the approach to develop a CBT training program on end-of-life concerns for NAs in rural communities.

Thesaurus Terms:
computer assisted instruction, computer program /software, education evaluation /planning, educational resource design /development, nursing education, terminal patient care Internet, allied health personnel, death, focus group, interactive multimedia, nursing research, quality of life, rural area, rural health clinical research, human subject

Phase II

Contract Number: 2R44NR008813-02
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase II year
2005
(last award dollars: 2006)
Phase II Amount
$749,970

Death comes to each of us. More and more, Americans reach the end of their lives in institutions. As the cost of nursing escalates, facilities that care for the dying increasingly turn to less expensive, and often untrained, nurses aides (NAs) to provide for the needs of the dying. Quality end-of-life care represents an urgent national priority. Rural America contains not just a disproportionate share of the nation's elderly but a higher age-adjusted rate of mortality at every stage of life. Rural communities also possess unique cultural attributes that shape the experience of health care at the end of life. Having demonstrated in Phase I the feasibility of a computer-based training (CBT) program to train rural NAs in end-of-life care, Toborg Associate proposes in Phase II to fully develop a six-module CBT. Using 15 focus groups and 15 key informant interviews, staff will define the perceptions and attitudes of NAs in rural communities to issues related to the terminally ill and care at the end-of-life. At the completion of the CBT, staff will randomize NAs between experimental and a control conditions in a rigorously designed experiment and analyze data to determine the effectiveness of the firm's CBT