“Surgery Is Certainly One Good Option”: Quality and Time-Efficiency of Informed Decision-Making in Surgery
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Informed decision-making has been widely promoted in several medical settings, but little is known about the actual practice in orthopaedic surgery and there are no clear guidelines on how to improve the process in this setting. This study was designed to explore the quality of informed decision-making in orthopaedic practice and to identify excellent time-efficient examples with older patients. METHODS: We recruited orthopaedic surgeons, and patients sixty years of age or older, in a Midwestern metropolitan area for a descriptive study performed through the analysis of audiotaped physician-patient interviews. We used a valid and reliable measure to assess the elements of informed decision-making. These included discussions of the nature of the decision, the patient's role, alternatives, pros and cons, and uncertainties; assessment of the patient's understanding and his or her desire to receive input from others; and exploration of the patient's preferences and the impact on the patient's daily life. The audiotapes were scored with regard to whether there was a complete discussion of each informed-decision-making element (an IDM-18 score of 2) or a partial discussion of each element (an IDM-18 score of 1) as well as with a more pragmatic metric (the IDM-Min score), reflecting whether there was any discussion of the patient's role or preference and of the nature of the decision. The visit duration was studied in relation to the extent of the informed decision-making, and excellent time-efficient examples were sought. RESULTS: There were 141 informed-decision-making discussions about surgery, including knee and hip replacement as well as wrist/hand, shoulder, and arthroscopic surgery. Surgeons frequently discussed the nature of the decision (92% of the time), alternatives (62%), and risks and benefits (59%); they rarely discussed the patient's role (14%) or assessed the patient's understanding (12%). The IDM-18 scores of the 141 discussions averaged 5.9 (range, 0 to 15; 95% confidence interval, 5.4 to 6.5). Fifty-seven percent of the discussions met the IDM-Min criteria. The median duration of the visits was sixteen minutes; the extent of informed decision-making had only a modest relationship with the visit duration. Time-efficient strategies that were identified included use of scenarios to illustrate distinct choices, encouraging patient input, and addressing primary concerns rather than lengthy recitations of pros and cons. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, which we believe is the first to focus on informed decision-making in orthopaedic surgical practice, we found opportunities for improvement but we also found that excellent informed decision-making is feasible and can be accomplished in a time-efficient manner.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.116 | 0.352 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".