The Effect of Remote Treatment on Medical Provider Creative Thinking and Patient Disclosure

NCT06784635 | Not Yet Recruiting

• 1 other identifier: STUDY00003845
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 388
• Locations: 0 countries
• Sites: N/A

Brief Summary

The investigators will be doing this study to understand how the environment of communication (including talking about health) impact doctors' ability to find solutions and health issues to clinical problems for patients. Participants are being asked to take part in this research study because they are either:

• A final year medical student
• OR a person willing to act out a diagnosis. Participants will do a few tasks:
• Questionnaires: Participants will be asked to complete a questionnaire before and after a short interview. The investigators will ask participants questions to find out their general psychological traits and skills, which can affect clinical interviews. The investigators believe it should take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire.
• Demographic Information: The investigators will ask participants about demographics, which may include their age, gender identity, race and ethnicity.
• Interview with a medical student/patient: This will be a recorded interview between a medical student and person acting as a patient. In this meeting, they will either meet online or in person, with white noise on or off, in a brightly lit room or a regularly lit room.
• Acting patients will be given a hypothetical condition, with a list of symptoms included. Besides this list, they will be asked to answer the medical questions as though they are themselves (e.g., height, weight)
• Medical students will be given a list of tip questions that will help with their diagnosis.

Conditions

Focus is on Behavior of Health Professionals Generally

Keywords

Patient disclosure; human-computer interaction; social psychology; health psychology; healthcare delivery

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• Creativity in medical practice (medical student- number of possible diagnoses)

  Creativity of medical practitioners will be measured using the number of possible diagnoses generated by the medical student.

  From time of enrollment to end of study duration (1 hour)

• Creativity in medical practice (medical student- correct diagnosis reached)

  Creativity of medical practitioners will be measured by whether or not they get the correct diagnosis.

  From time of enrollment to end of study duration (1 hour)

• Tendency toward disclosure by patients

  We will measure how many words the acting participants use to describe their health condition when asked an embarrassing question, without further prompting by the medical student.

  From time of enrollment to end of study duration (1 hour)

Study Arms (2)

Online interaction

EXPERIMENTAL

Participant allocated to this arm will meet online, although they will be in the same building. They will have a conversation over an encrypted video platform.

Behavioral: Online interaction

In person interaction

EXPERIMENTAL

Participant allocated to this arm will meet in person, in the same room. They will have a conversation face to face in an office setting.

Behavioral: In person

Interventions

In person BEHAVIORAL

Participant dyads will meet in person for a mock clinical interview, seated at a desk opposite their counterpart. They will be in an office setting. There will be a sham white noise and lamp device placed on the desk.

In person interaction

Online interaction BEHAVIORAL

Participant dyads will meet online in a mock clinical interview, via an encrypted video call, seated at a desk. They will be in an office setting. There will be a sham white noise and lamp device placed on the desk.

Online interaction

Eligibility Criteria

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

You may qualify if:

• (for medical student cohort)
• English speaking
• Be enrolled in an Medical Doctorate or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree
• Be in their final year of study
• (for the acting participant cohort)
• Aged 18 or older
• Must state they have current healthcare coverage
• English speaking at native fluency level

You may not qualify if:

• (for medical student cohort)
• Have previous experience as healthcare providers that is separate from their current medical training (e.g., being a nurse)
• Work in a technology sector
• Declare a conflict of interest
• Unable or unwilling to sign informed consent documents -(for the acting participant cohort)
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• There is significant current or past psychiatric illness that may inhibit their ability to consent or participate (self-described)
• They are not willing or able to sign informed consent documents

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Ayoub Bouguettaya: lead
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: collaborator

Related Publications (1)

• Bouguettaya A, Aboujaoude E. The effect of remote treatment on medical provider creative thinking and patient disclosure: protocol for the MED-CREATE trial. Trials. 2025 Oct 6;26(1):389. doi: 10.1186/s13063-025-09121-0.

  PMID: 41053846 DERIVED

Related Links

• This is the OSF link where data will be shared. The protocol is about to be submitted for peer review in an academic journal.

Study Officials

• Ayoub Bouguettaya, PhD

  Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

Elias Aboujaoude, MD

CONTACT

415-244-3724; elias.aboujaoude@cshs.org

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: SPONSOR INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Principal Investigator

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: January 15, 2025
• First Posted: January 20, 2025
• Study Start: July 30, 2025
• Primary Completion (Estimated): July 29, 2027
• Study Completion (Estimated): December 20, 2027
• Last Updated: January 20, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-01

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: The study protocol will be public prior to the start of the study, which is anticipated to be Jul 2025
• Access Criteria: This will be available on Open Science Framework as downloadable files, with the full R code for analysis and a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file of the data.