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Informing Patients About Their Surgery's Environmental Impact: an Effective Pathway to Sustainable Healthcare?
Sponsor: University of Amsterdam
Summary
The healthcare sector contributes significantly to climate change. Reducing the number of patients receiving resource-intensive procedures such as surgery can lower carbon emissions, particularly when two treatments with comparable clinical outcomes are available. Nevertheless, the impact of incorporating environmental considerations into patients' decision-making processes remains underexplored. The investigators examine how including information about the environmental impact of treatment options in a gallstone decision aid affects patients' real-life choice between surgery and the more sustainable alternative of conservative treatment. Moreover, the investigators examine whether factors such as severity of symptoms moderate the relation between sustainability information and patients' treatment choice. An exploratory vignette study informed the hypotheses that will be tested among actual patients with gallstones making actual treatment decisions. The results of this ecologically valid study have implications for both clinical practice and healthcare policy by offering insight into the effectiveness of pathways to include patients in the transition towards sustainable healthcare.
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
Any - Any
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
400
Start Date
2026-04-01
Completion Date
2027-07-01
Last Updated
2026-04-01
Healthy Volunteers
No
Interventions
Sustainability added to decision aid
The intervention decision aid includes a page with information about the environmental impact of surgical removal of the gallbladder, and a control condition, which includes no such information. Besides information about the environmental impact of gallbladder surgery, the intervention and control conditions will be identical. At the end of the decision aid patients will be debriefed in general phrasing (i.e., the aim of this study was to examine which factors affect treatment choice) to prevent influencing the actual decision. Approximately three months after patients received the decision aid, patients will receive an invitation via the PatientPlus portal to complete a survey in which the investigators inquire about their final treatment decision (first reminder after one week, second reminder after two weeks). At the end of this survey, patients will be debriefed about the aim of examining how information about the environmental impact of surgery affects treatment choice.
Locations (1)
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands