The following is a summary of “Project EPIC (Early Palliative Care In COPD): A Formative and Summative Evaluation of the EPIC Telehealth Intervention,” published in the APRIL 2023 issue of Pain Management by Iyer, et al.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often receive limited early, concurrent palliative care interventions. Project EPIC (Early Palliative Care In COPD) was a multiphase mixed-methods study to address this gap. For a study, researchers sought to conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the EPIC intervention, a telephonic nurse coach-led early palliative care intervention adapted from the ENABLE© intervention in cancer.

The study was conducted in two phases. Phase I involved a formative evaluation, where patients with moderate-to-very-severe COPD, family caregivers, and pulmonary and palliative care clinicians rated the acceptability and feasibility of the EPIC intervention using a Likert-scale survey. Phase II was a summative evaluation, where patients and family caregivers from Phase I participated in a three-month pilot of the EPIC prototype to evaluate intervention and data collection feasibility (≥70% completion) and to provide qualitative feedback.

Phase I Formative Evaluation: Priority early palliative care needs in COPD from our prior research mapped well to the EPIC prototype, and patients (n = 10), family caregivers (n = 10), pulmonary clinicians (n = 6), and palliative care clinicians (n = 6) found EPIC acceptable and feasible to support adaptation. Phase II Summative Evaluation: Patients (n=5; ages 49 to 72; 40% had moderate COPD; 40% were Black) and their family caregivers (n=5; ages 51 to 73; 40% Black) completed all of the EPIC prototype’s components, including weekly phone sessions, a follow-up call after one month, an Advance Directive, attending palliative care clinics, and 95% of monthly phone data collection sessions. All participant feedback regarding EPIC was favorable.

The EPIC intervention was acceptable and feasible for COPD patients and their family caregivers. The study suggested that larger feasibility and effectiveness trials of the EPIC intervention were warranted.

Reference: jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(22)01005-3/fulltext