Recruiting

Observational Study

Sponsor:

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Code:

NCT07405710

Conditions

Code Status Discussions With Medical In-patients

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 65+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

Death language

Study Details

Brief summary:

In order to systematically improve code status communication and documentation while clarifying how providers understand code status decisions, we propose the Choice of Diction's Effect Electronic Measures of Resuscitation Study Inpatient (CODE-EMRS.I) with 3 aims: Aim 1 - Determine rate of patient utilization of code status invitation (research) via the Portal (Hypothesis 1: Participants with an existing Portal are more likely to participate in research than new signups); Aim 2 - Evaluate different phrasings in code status prompts with and without death language (Hypothesis 2: Participants are more likely to pick no code with death language than without); Aim 3 - Determine how objective data drives physician agreement on code status decision (Hypothesis 3: Physicians are more likely to disagree with full code decisions for poor GO-FAR, but not CCI). Participants will fill out all study questionnaires electronically, but have options within these to ask to speak to a study physician/their own physician for clarification. After completing the surveys, the research associate will deliver the patient's code status decision to the attending of record and ask their views on it. Once a week, participants who have expressed interest in the study (by clicking the "I am interested" button) but have not completed the study will receive a reminder to complete the study as well as an offer to withdraw from the study in that same communication.

Conditions

Code Status Discussions With Medical In-patients

Study ID

NCT07405710

Start date

Feb 9, 2026

Status verified date

Feb, 2026

Completion date

Jun 30, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Jun 30, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 65+

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Age >65, English-fluency in reading and speaking, and the capacity to consent

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Requiring ICU-level care

Study Design

Enrollment

118 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Health Services Research

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Experimental/Death language

Participants will be asked:

The purpose of this trial is to understand how the words we use to describe CPR affect patient decisions. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is performed when the heart stops beating. It consists of electric shocks to the heart, pumping the chest to circulate blood, and using a breathing machine to help with breathing. The success rate of CPR is about 1 in 7, and even when the heart restarts, the brain and other organs can be damaged. If your heart were to stop beating and you were to die without resuscitation, would you prefer that we attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), or would you prefer that we do not resuscitate (DNR)?

no intervention: Standard/non-death language

Participants will be asked:

The purpose of this trial is to understand how the words we use to describe CPR affect patient decisions. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is performed when the heart stops beating. It consists of electric shocks to the heart, pumping the chest to circulate blood, and using a breathing machine to help with breathing. The success rate of CPR is about 1 in 7, and even when the heart restarts, the brain and other organs can be damaged. If your heart were to stop beating, would you prefer that we attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), or would you prefer that we do not resuscitate (DNR)?

Interventions

Death language

We will explicitly mention death when letting the participant know about CPR

Primary outcome measure

  • Code status decision [ Time Frame: At enrollment ]
  • Physician of record decision for and agreement with code status [ Time Frame: Within 24 hours of patient decision ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Locations

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital - New Brunswick

Recruiting

New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States, 08901

Contacts

More Information

Sponsor

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Last update posted

Feb 12, 2026

Last verified

Feb, 2026

Keywords

  • Code status
  • CPR
  • EMR
  • Death language

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey on 2026-02-12.