Clinical trial NCT04176796: Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Medical Student Study 2
Official title: Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Medical Student Study 2
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Cardiac Transplant Disorder
Keywords: Heart Transplant
Transplant Survival
Applied Ethics
Medical Students
Human Behavior
Decision Psychology
Lead sponsor: Carnegie Mellon University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2019-11-25
Enrollment: 105
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: 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: 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.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

Participants will be asked to participate if they confirm the following inclusion criteria in the consent form.

1. 18 years of age or older
2. must read and understand the information in the consent form
3. must want to participate in the research and continue with the survey
4. must live in United States
5. 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

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Primary outcomes:
measure: Hospital Choice
timeFrame: 1 day
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Pittsburgh
country: United States
facility: Carnegie Mellon University
state: Pennsylvania
Study officials:
affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University
name: Alison E Butler, BS
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: