Mariken Stegmann

other symptoms. The GP will invite the patient to value and rank the different goals  according to the trade‐off principle: that is, that goals can‐ not be of equal importance. The  four values, each representing the importance of a goal, then form the “OPT score.”  Afterwards, the patient and oncologist can then take these preferences into account when  discussing treatment options.  Bias in the GP might occur because randomisation will only be performed at the patient  level. To compensate for this, each GP will be asked to use the OPT only in patients from the  intervention group. We also think that, because patient recruitment will be from eight  different locations, there is only a small chance that a GP will have more than one patient  included in this study. Figure 2. Example of the Outcome Prioritisation (OPT) Tool. Note that in this example of the OPT, the  most important goal for this patient was to maintain independence.  Training of GPs  When a patient is included and allocated to the intervention group, the researcher will  contact the patients’ GP to give extensive information about the study and to request  participation. After agreement, the GP will receive the OPT together with written  information and a link to the OPT‐website  (optool.nl ) where, among other information, a  22 Chapter 2