Donald (Chip) E. Bailey Jr., PhD, RN, FAAN

Project Goals: This 2 year exploratory mixed-methods longitudinal case study (n=18) will describe patients’ and providers’ explanations of how and why they engage in technical work (T-WORK) and adaptive work (A-WORK), and adaptive leadership (A-LEAD) and how these strategies promote or pose barriers to patients’ SM in the context of the new genetic marker and treatments. Specific aims are to: 1) Examine how T-WORK, A-WORK and A-LEAD influence patients’ perceptions of their likelihood of cure and how this work relates to SM during 24 weeks of treatment for CHC; 2) Describe providers’ use of T-WORK and A-LEAD approaches during clinical encounters and 3) Describe the trajectories of illness perceptions, symptoms, viral load, and SM in relation to patient and provider reports of T-WORK, A-WORK and A-LEAD from the index clinical encounter to the follow-up treatment response encounter (approximately 24 weeks).

This study will explore prostate cancer treatment decision making among males age 50 years of age and older without disease by having men select the best treatment option for them and then ask them to rank order a list of prostate cancer treatment options. In a second aim we will explore how the manipulation (different names for different participants) of the treatment name “active surveillance” matters in prostate cancer treatment decision making.

Project Goals: The Center for Self-Management in Life-Limiting Illness (PI James Tulsky) will oversee three intervention studies that address the medical, emotional and role components of self-management. Project 2, “Uncertainty Management in Patients Awaiting Liver Transplant,” (D.E. Bailey, Jr., Project Director) helps patients awaiting liver transplant cope emotionally with uncertainty.

Project Goals: The specific aims are to: 1) identify potentially distinct classes of trajectories (e.g., stable, declining, improving) of CHC-related symptoms and quality of life among patients who are watching, waiting and monitoring, and to identify the demographic and illness markers associated with particular trajectories of change; 2) examine the associations of these symptom trajectories and QOL with illness uncertainty; and 3) explore the concerns of patients living with chronic hepatitis C that may be unique and unaddressed with quantitative measures.