Effect of a Decision Aid on Decision Making for the Treatment of Pelvic Organ Prolapse

Overview

Pelvic organ prolapse is a common condition that affects millions of women every year. There are many options for treatment and it can be difficult to make a decision as how best to proceed. Previous studies have shown that decisional aids (DAs) may improve knowledge, physician-patient communication, decisional conflict, and patient satisfaction. However, no study has evaluated the role of a decisional aid among women presenting for evaluation and management of prolapse. We would like to determine if a decision aid for prolapse decreases the amount of decisional conflict women face when choosing a plan of care. We hypothesize that there will be a difference in the level/amount of decisional conflict between women who receive a DA and those who do not. Specifically, we anticipate that women randomized to receiving standard counseling and a DA with have less decisional conflict than the cohort receiving standard counseling alone.

Women scheduled for the evaluation and management of pelvic organ prolapse at Hartford Hospital will be contacted via telephone prior to the initial consultation visit to ascertain interest for this study. If they are interested, they will be randomized to one of two groups: those that receive a DA and those that do not. This study requires you to answer some questions about the information packet you received in the mail. We routinely send a packet to all of our new patients. Half of the participants received a decision aid to supplement their information packet and the other half received our routine informational packet. You will be asked to complete a set of 2 questionnaires. It will take less than 10 minutes to complete these questions. All data will be extracted and used by only the investigators on this study. The data will be stored on a restricted-access network drive and results will be reported in aggregate and no personal health history will be disclosed. Our primary outcome for this analysis is decisional conflict differences in those who receive a DA and those who do not.