Trial reportJournal of assisted reproduction and genetics2024
The impact of an adapted SPIKES protocol vs routine care in the delivery of bad news to IVF patients: an exploratory pilot multicenter randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04917445 (A Comparison of the SPIKES Protocol for Delivering Bad News to the Current Standard of Care in the in Vitro Fertilization Population), which is not on this map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
A Comparison of the SPIKES Protocol for Delivering Bad News to the Current Standard of Care in the in Vitro Fertilization Population
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- How to Effectively Communicate Dismal Diagnoses in Dermatology and Venereology: From Skin Cancers to Sexually Transmitted Infections.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeDetermine if the SPIKES method was associated with less distress and more compassion than current modes of delivering negative pregnancy test results to patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.
methodsTwenty-seven nurses from two centers were randomized to use the modified SPIKES script or continue their standard of care; 136 patients with a negative hCG following embryo transfer were included. SPIKES nurses received 1 h of training by a study psychologist; nurses in the control group were instructed to deliver the news as done previously. Patients who underwent embryo transfer and received a call by a participating nurse with a negative test result received an email invitation on the following day.
resultsControl patients reported significantly less distress than SPIKES patients; 33% of SPIKES patients reported that they had felt "extremely sad," compared to 15.2% of the control patients (p = 0.01). Perceived compassion did not differ between the groups (all p ≥ 0.22).
conclusionPatients who received a negative pregnancy test result from the nurses who received a brief training and a script on how to deliver bad news via the modified SPIKES protocol reported significantly more distress than patients receiving negative results from nurses utilizing their standard of care. It is unclear whether a modified SPIKES method to deliver negative pregnancy test results will benefit patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.
trial registrationClinical trials.gov NCT04917445.
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