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

NCT ID: NCT06784635

Last Updated: 2025-01-20

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 388 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2025-07-30
• Study Completion Date: 2027-12-20

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.

Detailed Description

This study will link two participants: a final year medical student and an acting patient. Both will fill out consent forms outlining the study with the above purpose) standardized demographic information, and psychometric scales, including ones measuring empathy, extraversion, openness, working memory, health literacy, and fatigue. They will then be randomly put into a dyad (consisting of one medical student and one acting patient). The acting patient (who will required to be of good health- no chronic or current health issues) will be asked to pretend to have a rare or hard to diagnose health condition, having been given a document providing details of the health condition and presenting symptoms. They will be told that otherwise, they should respond to the questions as though they are themselves (for example, if the participant asked, "how tall are you", they can disclose their actual height). The medical student will be given instructions to ask all relevant questions, including a list of potential topics they should ask about, some of which are embarrassing but relevant (e.g., bowel movements).

They will then be assigned to meet the other member of their dyad in one of two conditions: online or in person (unknown to the participants). They will then act as though this is a clinical interview, to diagnose the condition. Participants will be told the investigators will be changing the lighting and background noise as a sham treatment (white noise machine and desk lamp), concealing the study's true purpose: to understand how online versus offline environments the creativity of medical providers and the tendency toward disclosure. The interview will be recorded and transcribed. At the end of the interview, participants will be debriefed by the investigators, with an explanation of the deception, and be given the ability to withdraw their data at that point.

Conditions

Focus is on Behavior of Health Professionals Generally

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Online interaction

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.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Online interaction

Intervention Type: 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.

In person interaction

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.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

In person

Intervention Type: 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.

Interventions

In person

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.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Online interaction

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.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• (for medical student cohort)

1. English speaking

2. Be enrolled in an Medical Doctorate or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree

3. Be in their final year of study

• (for the acting participant cohort)

1. Aged 18 or older

2. Must state they have current healthcare coverage

3. English speaking at native fluency level

Exclusion Criteria

• (for medical student cohort)

1. Have previous experience as healthcare providers that is separate from their current medical training (e.g., being a nurse)

2. Work in a technology sector

3. Declare a conflict of interest

4. Unable or unwilling to sign informed consent documents -(for the acting participant cohort)

<!-- -->

1. There is significant current or past psychiatric illness that may inhibit their ability to consent or participate (self-described)

2. They are not willing or able to sign informed consent documents

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Ayoub Bouguettaya

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Ayoub Bouguettaya

Principal Investigator

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Ayoub Bouguettaya, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Central Contacts

Elias Aboujaoude, MD

Role: CONTACT

elias.aboujaoude@cshs.org

415-244-3724

References

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.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 41053846 (View on PubMed)

Related Links

https://osf.io/5bkwm/

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

Other Identifiers

STUDY00003845

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id