Can senior volunteers deliver reminiscence and creative activity interventions? Results of the legacy intervention family enactment randomized controlled trial.

Context: Palliative care patients and their family caregivers may have a foreshortened perspective of the time left to live, or the expectation of the patient's death in the near future. Patients and caregivers may report distress in physical, psychological, or existential/spiritual realms.
Objectives: To conduct a randomized controlled trial examining the effectiveness of retired senior volunteers (RSVs) in delivering a reminiscence and creative activity intervention aimed at alleviating palliative care patient and caregiver distress.
Methods: Of the 45 dyads that completed baseline assessments, 28 completed postintervention and 24 completed follow-up assessments. The intervention group received three home visits by RSVs; control group families received three supportive telephone calls by the research staff. Measures included symptom assessment and associated burden, depression, religiousness/spirituality, and meaning in life.
Results: Patients in the intervention group reported a significantly greater reduction in frequency of emotional symptoms (P=0.02) and emotional symptom bother (P=0.04) than the control group, as well as improved spiritual functioning. Family caregivers in the intervention group were more likely than control caregivers to endorse items on the Meaning of Life Scale (P=0.02). Only improvement in intervention patients' emotional symptom bother maintained at follow-up after discontinuing RSV contact (P=0.024).
Conclusion: Delivery of the intervention by RSVs had a positive impact on palliative care patients' emotional symptoms and burden and caregivers' meaning in life. Meaningful prolonged engagement with palliative care patients and caregivers, possibly through alternative modes of treatment delivery such as continued RSV contact, may be necessary for maintenance of therapeutic effects.
(Copyright © 2014 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)