Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Medical Student Study 2

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 125 medical student participants will be recruited from University of Pittsburgh Medical School and randomized to one of two different information presentation conditions. Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose the hospital that they would consider to be higher performing between two hospitals: one hospital with a non-selective, accepting strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, cherrypicking strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than excellent quality).

Detailed Description
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Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 125 medical student participants will be recruited from University of Pittsburgh Medical School and randomized to one of two different information presentation conditions: Condition 1 (baseline condition): view only combined transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) Condition 2: view only stratified transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate stratified into patients who received excellent donor organs and patients who received less than optimal donor organs) Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to.Each participant is asked to choose the hospital that they would consider to be higher performing between two hospitals: one hospital with a non-selective, accepting strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, cherrypicking strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than excellent quality). In order to identify the decision process that underlies this choice pattern, the investigators will examine a putative mediator. Specifically, participants will be asked to rate the extent to which they considered patients' chances of getting an excellent heart, avoiding a less-than-optimal heart, and getting any type of heart when making their choice between the two hospitals.

Official Title
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Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Medical Student Study 2

Conditions
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Cardiac Transplant Disorder

Intervention / Treatment
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* Other: Stratified Transplant Survival


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Participants will be asked to participate if they confirm the following inclusion criteria in the consent form. 18 years of age or older must read and understand the information in the consent form must want to participate in the research and continue with the survey must live in United States 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year medical student at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Exclusion Criteria: 1. participants who do not meet primary criterion of being a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year medical student at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine -

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| No Intervention: Condition 1: Combined only<br>Participants randomized to baseline (control) arm Condition 1 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals. | |
| Experimental: Condition 3: Stratified only<br>Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. | Other: Stratified Transplant Survival<br>* The transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs. Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ. excellent transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ]/[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant] marginal transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ]/[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant]<br>|

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Hospital Choice | The outcome variable will be a measure of binary choice between two hospitals: one with a selective donor-heart acceptance strategy and one with a non-selective donor heart acceptance strategy. Participants will respond to the question Which Hospital is a better choice for patients? Please click on one of the two tables below to indicate which hospital is the better choice. Participants will choose been two outcome tables featuring the selective and non-selective hospital (counterbalanced, such that each of the two choices is equally likely to be presented at top of the choice scenario in each condition). The number of participants that choose each hospital will be the measured outcome variable used in analyses. | 1 day | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mediator of Hospital Choice | On the next page of the survey, participants will respond to three mediator questions: There are many reasons why one transplant hospital might outperform another. Which reasons were most important in your decision? Please move the slider to indicate how much you considered each of the reasons below (0=reason was not important, 100=reason was extremely important). Participants will then move a slider bar (0-100) to indicate the importance of the following three items: Patients were more likely to receive an excellent donor heart at the hospital I picked. Patients were less likely to receive a marginal donor heart at the hospital I picked. Patients were more likely to receive any kind of heart at the hospital I picked. The third item (more likely to receive any kind of heart) will be the only variable that is included in the planned mediation analysis. | 1 day | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Heart Transplant, Transplant Survival, Applied Ethics, Medical Students, Human Behavior, Decision Psychology