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

Carnegie Mellon University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cardiac Transplant Disorder

Treatments: Other: Stratified Transplant Survival

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04176796

1 F30 HL152526-01-B

20PRE35120492 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

Details and patient eligibility

About

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).

Full 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.

Enrollment: 105 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

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

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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105 participants in 2 patient groups

Condition 1: Combined only

No Intervention group

Description:

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.

Condition 3: Stratified only

Experimental group

Description:

Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals.

Treatment:

Other: Stratified Transplant Survival