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

NCT04176796 | Completed Results

• 3 other identifiers: 1 F30 HL152526-01-B20PRE351204921F30HL152526-01
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 105
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

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).

Conditions

Cardiac Transplant Disorder

Keywords

Heart Transplant; Transplant Survival; Applied Ethics; Medical Students; Human Behavior; Decision Psychology

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• 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 Outcomes (1)

• Mediator of Hospital Choice

  1 day

Study Arms (2)

Condition 1: Combined only

NO INTERVENTION

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

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

Interventions

Stratified Transplant Survival OTHER

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 = \[number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ\]/\[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant\]

Condition 3: Stratified only

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• 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
• nd, 3rd, or 4th year medical student at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

You may not qualify if:

• \. participants who do not meet primary criterion of being a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year medical student at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Carnegie Mellon University: lead

Study Sites (1)

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213, United States

Location

Limitations and Caveats

Selection bias from use of medical school listserv to recruit trainees.

Results Point of Contact

• Title: Gretchen Chapman
• Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

gchapman@andrew.cmu.edu

412-268-3665

Study Officials

• Alison E Butler, BS

  Carnegie Mellon University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Publication Agreements

• PI is Sponsor Employee: No
• Restrictive Agreement: No

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: November 22, 2019
• First Posted: November 25, 2019
• Study Start: November 27, 2019
• Primary Completion: March 31, 2020
• Study Completion: March 31, 2020
• Last Updated: April 23, 2026
• Results First Posted: October 29, 2024

Record last verified: 2026-04

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: All of the raw files, statistical analysis protocol descriptions, and information for proper analysis will be available for download a minimum of 1 year, and a maximum of 3 years, after publication of the corresponding manuscripts.

Locations

US (1)